


Falling In Loathe: How Beetlejuice and Lydia Met.

by RT Fice (RT_Fice)



Series: A Beetlejuice Valentine. [5]
Category: Beetlejuice (1988), Beetlejuice (TV 1989), Beetlejuice - All Media Types
Genre: Bullying, Danger, Don't Fit In, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Hate at First Sight, Haunting, Humor, Loneliness, Middle-School Angst, New at School, New in Town, Revenge, Teacher Trouble, parent trouble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-08-07 21:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16416698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RT_Fice/pseuds/RT%20Fice
Summary: In her first week after moving to Peaceful Pines, 12-year-old Lydia Deetz has already incurred the wrath of new class-mate Claire Brewster, and some weirdo in the cemetery dressed as a ghost.Four days until Halloween, and Beetlejuice has been bested, for the first time in his death, by a 12-year-old brat in black.Beetlejuice and Lydia are determined take the other one down.  They could never be friends!  Never.....





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the Cartoonverse, but has many characters and elements from the Movieverse
> 
> My Beetlejuice is inspired by how he is in the animated series' first season, when he was a true poltergeist and potentially dangerous (i.e. blowing his cool in “Poopsie”), not how he is in later seasons, when he was just goofy and gross, and often a cowardly victim. There's also some influence from his movie version.

Graunt that no hobogoblin fright me,

No hungrie devils rise up and bite me;

No Urchins, Elves, or drunkards ghoasts

Shove me against walles or postes.

O graunt I may no black thing touch,

Though many men love to meet such.

                                          _John Day_

 

Beetlejuice hated kids.

He hated them when he was alive, and death had worsened his opinion.

The ghost could stomach babies, from a distance and for brief periods, only because they vomited, urinated and defecated with abandon. Not that he wanted to be around the noisy slugs, but they at least entertained him with how they drove living adults crazy.

Teenagers were complete pains in his big, white, dead ass. Most of the teenagers lived in the rural area outside the village of Peaceful Pines, and therefore outside the poltergeist's haunting perimeter, so he didn't have to endure them every day. They came in town for school and left immediately after. But on Friday or Saturday nights they bribed unscrupulous adults to buy them booze. The idiotic lightweights would get smashed on Budweiser or Fuzzy Baby Ducks IPA, then roar their used cars around the interstate, or barrel down the main street, hooting and throwing bottles and cans. Haunting them wasn't satisfying, because the alcohol dulled their reactions. They either doubted what they saw, or screamed and vomited copiously. This wasn't gratifying, since the ghost knew they'd have ended up doing that anyway. And the next day they attributed what they saw to being wasted, laughing at how they must have mistaken some ugly cornfield scarecrow in a striped suit for a ghost.

That was fricking insulting.

But junior high kids – Beetlejuice could never tell ages anymore – were just annoying little snots. Including those who this morning had unceremoniously dumped a black kitten here in the cemetery.

Peaceful Pines, Connecticut, had two schools for middle-grade kids: public, which the majority of the town's children attended, and one private, Miss Shannon's School For Girls. Miss Shanon's touted itself as an “academy” for the offspring of the few pretentious, upper-middle-class jerkwads whose goal was to insulate their precious babies from the bad influences of big cities. It was a 1950's hold-over, with delusions of training girls to be Young Ladies of Quality and Breeding. Like they were goddamn show horses.

But middle-school kids were great to haunt. They lacked the sardonic distrust of puberty. Their inexperience allowed them the belief that things adults stated were untrue or impossible – like poltergeists – could exist. They were old enough to think they could take care of themselves, making them rebel against grown-ups' warnings to, for instance, not wander into cemeteries without adult supervision, but young enough to sense, if only subconsciously, that they could be prey. When they were scared, they were scared to their marrow.

School had been in session for a month. From where he sat, cross-legged in the late October sunshine on the wide headstone of Felicity Ambrose, 1880-1896, Beetlejuice recognized the mean-spirited, dominating, baked-tan blonde he'd overheard other students call Claire Brewster. She, accompanied by two eighth grade village boys, had tossed the paper bag with the kitten beside the stone caretaker's shed. Now she was at the far end of the cemetery, directing the boys to push over a tombstone. That summer the Brewsters, whose wealth, he'd overheard from adults, came from munitions technology, had demolished an organic farm next to the golf course and replaced it with a laughably ostentatious McMansion. The daughter had reigned over the other kids since school began. Local boys in particular were held in thrall.

Beetlejuice turned and squinted, a white mist of a figure. He didn't recognize this other kid, on his side of the caretaker's building.

 _Black hair, natural. Black, knee-length dress over black tights, black, flat-heeled shoes, big black hat with black lace trim,_ _silver bat brooch_... Beetlejuice blew out air in amused contempt. _A baby Goth. Ain't that adorable._

Being banished to a small town didn't give Beetlejuice much opportunity to run into Goths.  But every now and then a few swanned in from New York or Boston, looking for a quaint New England village cemetery to stroll through. (" _So_ authentic!" purred one couple, until the ghost rose from a grave and ran them sobbing back to their Prius).  Once or twice a local teen would come back from Hartford with the typical Starter Goth Kit  -- black candles, Ouija board, pentacle necklace and/or nose ring -- and attempt to piss off their parents by glooming around the village.  Beej always made short order of that tiresome bullcrap.

So today his graveyard had spoiled, sociopathic brats and a little, scrawny booger looking to commune with the dead.  Poltergeists thrive on fear from the living.  Beetlejuice had been starving.  Looked like dinner was served.

*  *  *  *  *

Lydia Deetz hated kids.

People assumed that, because of New York City's diversity and inclusiveness, kids native to it were more tolerant.  What a laugh. They were as cliquey as any other kids.  The difference was how.  Elisabeth Irwin Junior High School had lots of kids whose parents were divorced.  But they looked down on her because, instead of running off with someone cool, like the Director of the Frick Collection, her mom escaped to Key West with her yoga instructor.  For a moment Lydia's peers seemed to warm to her because her step-mother was An Artiste.  That was until they unearthed that Delia's sculptures were Geometric Abstractions and her condo was done in De Stijl, instead her doing minimalist cubed chainsawed encomium in a condo stuffed with installations by Dorian Gaudin.

Goth was _so passe_ ', they opined, proof that Lydia was "trying too hard."  They declared she was "a baby" because she preferred _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_ to _The Human Centipede Part X1_.

Lydia wasn't _trying_ to be anything.  She'd _always_ been attracted to black, whether clothes or cats.  Ever since she could walk she loved peering at Victorian death photographs, fascinated by the children her age, permanently still for the cameras. Not surprisingly, Lydia preferred the company of animals to people, and it was just a coincidence that she was engrossed by insects that made other people shudder.  What of it?  Lydia didn't see the point of trying to be better than anyone else, because, when you got right down to it, everyone was potential food for something else, and if you were stupid enough to try to take a selfie with a grizzly at Yellowstone, it didn't give a fart whether you had a membership to MOMA or Disney World.

For class Lydia shared her collection of news reports of stupid people being eaten by animals.  It didn't go over well.  It demonstrated her lack of empathy and arrogance over those less educated than herself, her teacher told her, giving her a D.

The school analyst  -- this was the West Village; they didn't do psychologists -- told Lydia it would be worse when puberty hit so just suck it up already, and slid a prescription for Prozac and Paxil across his oak desk to her, all without looking up from his phone.  Lydia hadn't spoken a word.  But she'd noticed the photograph of the grinning analyst on a ginormous yacht, holding a glass-eyed marlin with a CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation.

Lydia flushed the prescription, walked out of school, and had an Avocado Panini at Cafe Panino Mucho Gusto.

Her parents weren't upset; they were too busy telling Lydia about the move to Connecticut.  Father declared her a "trooper" for taking it so well.  Lydia smiled and surreptitiously deleted the school's message on the home phone about her having disappeared from school grounds.

Today was Sunday.  Lydia's first day of seventh grade was tomorrow.  During the week since she'd moved in the local kids had eyed her in passing at the grocery store and library.  Not the "Hey, there's someone interesting" kind of eyeing, either.

The upside of this place was that it was easy to avoid other kids.

Or so Lydia thought.

* * * * *

 _What's she doing?_    Beetlejuice ventured a few graves closer and perched atop The Reverend Thaddeus Wilcox,  1800 - 1832, a Second Great Awakening preacher who died from an infected paper cut and was really, really bitter about the Neitherworld. The kid in black lugged a big camera out of her black bag and aimed it, up close, at a tombstone.  The camera made sounds he hadn't heard in he couldn't remember how long.

Having nothing but time on his hands, the ghost often fended off boredom by reading living world newspapers and spying on people's TVs and smartphones.  Beetlejuice knew all about the latest technology.  So he was stunned that this little black spit of a kid was using an analog camera.  With _film_.

_Who th' hell even makes film anymore?  What kid has th' patience to learn how t' develop film?_

Just as she was steadying the lens, the hairy front legs of a huge, black spider tested the air over the top of the tombstone.  They settled on the marble and the creature hauled up its body, the size of a jawbreaker.

The kid's head jerked back.  Her black, already large eyes widened as she froze in place.

Beetlejuice chortled silently and waited for the scream.

"Ooo!"

Beeltejuice blinked.  It wasn't so much a scream as a delighted squeal.

*  *  *  *

"Ooo!  What are _you_?"

Lydia lowered her camera and grinned as the spider came over the lichen-covered top of the tombstone and began a descent over the beautiful engraving in the front.

"Stop right there!"  Carefully, she held the tip of her right forefinger in front of the spider, halting its progress.  While it paused, Lydia aimed.  "You're right between 'Beloved' and 'Wife.'  This is _perfect_!"  The camera snapped rapidly.

 _Th' hell?_ thought Beetlejuice.

Lydia heard a tiny mew.

She waited.  Not hearing it again, the girl walked carefully around the area, looking everywhere.  "Mew!" she said, a perfect imitation of a cat.

Beetlejuice was indifferent toward the kitten's plight.  It wasn't his business to intervene in the natural course of things among the living.  But he'd considered opening the bag and shooing the kitten out of his graveyard, only because when it died it'd attract crows.  Normally animals ignored the dead, since the dead didn't effect them in any way.  But corvids hated him, being a fellow predator of bugs.   The population of edible insects had dropped by half since the ghost had showed up.  Cold weather was coming, and the crows and bluejays resented every bite the ghost robbed them of.

By the cemetery caregiver's old, stone building, a small paper bag, its top folded and taped shut, jostled.  Lydia tore it open.

"Oh. OH."  Lydia pushed her camera to one side and clutched the trembling black kitten to her chest.  Her eyes blazed. "Who would ---"

"Who're _you_?"

Beetlejuice and Lydia looked up.

The blonde middle-school girl wore a v-neck t-shirt with the word _Pink_ in cursive gold glitter.  This was over tight black pants with gold and silver stripes on the sides, running from waist to cuff, with the words PINK PINK PINK all the way down.  She glared haughtily at the girl in black.  "Like, _what_ are you?"

The two older boys snickered.

Lydia had seen the blonde girl at the Mondo Mall, when she was there buying her school supplies.  The blonde was with a sizeable group.  They didn't acknowledge her.  After observing them, Lydia had been glad they hadn't.

"I thought it'd be dead by now," one of the boys blurted.

"What?!"  Lydia stood up, holding the kitten protectively.  "You _knew_ he was in that bag?"  She snapped, "Did _you_ do this?!"

"Gawd, like, _what_ is your damage?" said the blonde.

"You _wanted_ him to die?!"  Lydia stormed past Beetlejuice, who was just a shimmer in the sunlight.  She slung her camera bag over her head.  Apparently too agitated to think, she didn't stuff her camera in the bag, so it still dangled around her neck as well.  Stroking the mewing kitten's dirty head, she stated, with surprisingly mature composure that made the poltergeist stare, "You are wretched."  She quoted Poe.  "'Thou sink of iniquity.  Thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable.'"

The kids and poltergeist blinked.

"That French?" asked the larger boy.

"Are you, like, _insulting_ me?" said the blonde.

"How absolutely not astonishing that you can't tell," said Lydia.  She started toward the cemetery gate.

The two boys stopped in front of her.

"Nice camera," said the taller of the two.

"I wouldn't."  Lydia's voice was impatient.  "I was born and bred in New York City.  I was riding the subway by myself when I was eight."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" asked the shorter boy, sincere in his obliviousness.

"It means," said Lydia, "step aside."

Instead, the boys took a step forward.  The blonde watched, smirking.

Beetlejuice scowled.  If it'd been just the blonde and black-haired girl fighting it out, he'd have left it alone.  But one thing he hated was cowardice.  Two kids a head bigger than the scrawny girl, and she had her arms full with a mewing kitten and was laden with a heavy camera and bag.  No one would ever say that the poltergeist had a molecule of decency.  But this rankled him.

Striking like snakes, one boy pushed Lydia's hat into her face while the other clenched her camera and tugged.  Lydia yelled and grabbed the camera strap that was choking her, desperately trying not to crush the kitten.  She realized, angrily, that she should have grabbed her pepper spray from her bag _before_ threatening the boys.

Lydia fell backward.  She curled around the kitten, leaving herself open as one boy kicked her and the other yanked at the strap still around her neck.

The blonde laughed.  That is, until she stopped.

She made a gargled squeak.

The boys looked up.

Lydia, her eyes closed tightly, heard a sound like none she'd ever heard before. It was beyond a human moan.  It was as cold as a wind biting frostbite into one's cheek.  It was the misery of lost hope, the laughter of a relish for suffering, and the fierceness of something that has cornered you and is going to eat you alive, and no one can save you.  Her hair stood on end, and everything in her mind screamed, _Flee!_ _ **Flee!**_   The kitten was silent, shaking terribly.

The screams that followed were very human indeed.  Lydia dared to uncurl and lift her head.

She could only see him from behind.  The person shambling after the running, tripping kids wore a torn black-and-white-striped suit filthy with dirt, mold, and a rust-colored crust.  His hair stood up, pale yellow with a tinge of green.  His steps were halting, but rapid.

As the blonde and two boys bolted through the open gate and into the road, Lydia got to her feet.

The person turned.

He wasn't a person.  Not any more.  The red-brown crust was dried blood, all around his gaping mouth and down his chin, and from a horrific gash across his torso that revealed ripped flesh and cracked ribs.  The skin of what was left of his face stretched taut and dry as a mummy's over sharp cheekbones, drawing so tight over his nose that its tip was pointed.  His head swung toward Lydia.  His eyes widened, opaque and viscous as spoiled oysters.  A tongue lolled out, dripping maggots.  He -- it -- methodically dragged its feet in her direction.

Lydia dashed to a large copper watering can hanging from a water spigot.  Seeing it empty, she quickly but carefully placed the trembling kitten in it.

The person-thing made that sound that slipped under Lydia's skin, raw as ice and carnivorous.

Lydia dove for her camera and came up with its flash blasting like a Gatling gun.

The whatever stumbled over its split, moldering black boots and raised a wizened hand to protect its eyes.

"Great costume!" Lydia yelled, keeping the flash going with one hand as she blindly opened her large camera bag. "Is that Ben Nye Makeup?  So, you're, what, in the local theater troupe?"  Still shooting, she fished the kitten from the watering can and dropped him in her camera bag, zipping it closed.  Pulling the bag's strap over her head, the camera flash flaring, she maneuvered around the person shielding his face and backed toward the gate.  She lowered her camera and shouted, "Or maybe you're just some pathetic adult who likes scaring children!  I won't even bother calling the police on you, because you're such a _loser_!"

With that, Lydia ran for it.

Beetlejuice, blinking watering eyes, lowered his arms from his face.  _What the frick just happened??_   As his sight normalized he made out the shape of the girl running across the road.  Black smoke and flames shot from his nostrils with a fury he hadn't felt in decades.

 _Pathetic adult, huh?_ _ **A loser**_ _?! Ya think yer_ _ **safe**_ _once you're outta the cemetery?_   The poltergeist lifted from the ground and floated at speed after her.

Lydia knew better than to stop and look behind her, or take the time to dig out her pepper spray.  Her street sense warned her the pursuit wasn't over, and she'd better find sanctuary, immediately.

Maitland's, a three-story hardware store, was directly across the road from the graveyard.  Through the glass store front the girl saw several customers.  Feeling a freezing wind at her back, Lydia leaped onto the store's wide front steps.

Beetlejuice stopped in the road and swore acidly.  Instantly he reverted to his normal form, and became nothing but a trick of the light.  There was only one place in Peaceful Pines he couldn't enter, and it wasn't by choice.  He looked up.

 _They_ were glaring at him from the second-story window.

Beetlejuice gave them the finger.

Lydia turned.  Nothing, there was nothing.  This was both a relief and very disturbing.

From the time she could walk Lydia had been warned about New York's dangerous people.  There were drug dealers, paranoid schizophrenics off their meds, con artists, hucksters, shysters, pick pockets, muggers, rapists, and pedophiles.  When Lydia was ten Delia enrolled her in a self-defense class taught by an ex-Israeli Special Forces Agent.  "Forget all you've heard about kicking grown men in the crotch," she'd snapped.  "Go for the eyes, every time."  The class practiced by jabbing their thumbnails into grapes.

A frightening man had once hovered in Lydia's space when she was coming home from the bodega.  She'd shouted, brandished her pepper spray with dye, and attracted attention.  The man had chosen a bad location, near the self-proclaimed Dykes With Bikes bar.  Women with Harley Davidson tattoos made short work of him, then called the police.  That had been more than enough drama for her.

But this.... Lydia's heart rate was only beginning to slow.  This was somehow worse.

 _What kind of man goes to all the trouble of putting on professional quality makeup and costume and hangs around a graveyard?_ The more Lydia thought about it, the more it didn't make sense.  Halloween was three days away.  Why was he in costume _now_?  Was he just waiting for _anyone_ to walk into the cemetery?  Had he followed her?  Or the other kids?  What would he have done if he'd caught her?  And where had he disappeared to, so quickly and absolutely?

A little fear leaked out.  Lydia hurried into the hardware store.

Immediately she was immersed in a warm sensation of safety. Lydia felt as if a motherly quilt was wrapped around her.  It was such an extraordinary feeling of relief that Lydia let out the breath she hadn't known she was holding.

With the exception of the cash registers, the hardware store hadn't been modernized since it was built. Sunlight streamed through the glass store front, giving everything a welcoming glow.  The floor, shelves, and check-out counters were well-seasoned wood, the ceiling pressed tin, and the lighting fixtures brass with milk glass globes.  Along with modern items Lydia saw bolts of cloth and spools of ribbon, and, lining one wall, finished quilts hung with For Sale tags.  Dried flowers and herbs dangled from ceiling hooks, their lovely scents permeating the air.  The store was cozy, homey, and loving.

Lydia ended her scan by seeing a woman and a girl, younger than herself, standing at the check-out, staring at her.   Mother and daughter were dressed identically.

"Oh.  Well.  Aren't you..." Obviously censoring whatever she meant to say, the woman paused while her brain Rolodexed through socially appropriate substitutes.  She chirped, "...precious." After taking a tiny breath to clear her tight throat, she asked, "You're the _Deetz's_ daughter, aren't you?"

Lydia sighed.  She'd have been happy to never again see the hyperactive, hyper-ambitious realtor.  "Hello, Mrs. Butterfield."

Mrs. Butterfield chirruped to Mr. Stanger, the store's owner, who was at the cash register, "I sold the Deetzs you-know-who's house."

"Whose?" asked Mr. Stanger.

The woman's pinched expression looked like she was trying to restrain a fart.  " _You_ know."  Her eyes swiveled, indicating the store.  "The nice, young couple.  The ones who...  _The river_...."

"They committed murder-suicide off the bridge and drowned," declared Little Jane, fixing her eyes on Lydia as if waiting for her to attempt to rob the place.

"Oh, no one's ever said _that_!" her mother protested, her pitch a little too high.

" _You_ have," said her daughter.

"Now, Jane--"

"Lots of times.  You always wonder who was trying to kill who.  Adam because _Barb_ -ra couldn't get pregnant, or _Barb_ -ra because he was impotent--"

"So nice to see you again, Lydah!"  Mrs. Butterfield yanked Jane Jr. by the arm and hurried to the door, ignoring Mr. Stanger holding out her change.  "Tell your parents I hope they're loving the house!  Bye bye!"  The door chime shook repeatedly as they exited.

"Lydia," Lydia corrected, watching their white Suburban leave in a spray of gravel.

A tiny mew whispered up from her camera case.

"Oh!"  Lydia knelt and extracted the kitten.  It cuddled against her chest, a black, dirty ball.

"Ah."  The tall, white-haired man smiled.  "I think you might want some pet needs?"

Together they gathered cat litter, a litter pan, a cat carrier, a scratching post, furry toy mice, corks with feathers stuck in the ends, canned kitten food, a small, polar fleece blanket, and a book, _Caring For Your Kitten._

 _The only thing good about being a "spoiled rich girl,"_ Lydia thought as she paid for the items, _is I can afford things like this_.

Lydia folded the blanket, adjusted it in the carrier, and placed the kitten on top of it.  It looked at her with eyes so young they were still blue, and mewed loudly.

"I think that load is going to be more than you can carry," Mr. Stanger observed.  Noting that there were no more customers, he said, "Tell you what.  I'll close the store and give you a ride home."

"I don't want to put you out, Mr. Stanger."

"Well, if you were I wouldn't offer.  I'll give your folks a call to tell them we're coming."

"No, thank you!"  It came out more desperate than Lydia intended.  "I...um...."  She glanced down at the kitten, then at the man's gentle blue eyes.

He nodded.  "Better they get the surprise when they can see how cute and helpless it is.  I understand.  Got a puppy that way, once."  He flipped the OPEN sign in the window to CLOSED, and set the Will Be Back clock for fifteen minutes.  Mr. Stanger picked up some of the items and escorted Lydia out the door.

Carrying the rest of the items, Lydia paused on the porch as the man passed her to his car.  "The door didn't lock."

"Not to worry," he chuckled.  "Adam and Barbara will look after things."

"But, they're d--"  Lydia abruptly shut her mouth.  "OK.  Good."

 _How can he believe they're still alive?_ Lydia thought as she buckled her seat belt and held the cat carrier on her lap.  _He's too clear-minded to have_ _dementia_.  Lydia worried about someone stealing from the store, but she figured this was a small town where they trusted each other, and Mr. Stanger knew what he was doing.

The car backed up through the all but invisible poltergeist, then turned onto the road.  Beetlejuice floated, about to follow.

"Hey!  _You!_ "

Beetlejuice looked over his shoulder, sneering.

On the porch, Adam Maitland's arms were crossed over his chest.  Barbara's fists were set with determination on her hips.

"What you did in the cemetery was horrible!" she snapped.

"News flash, Babs," said Beetlejuice.  "I'M A POLTERGEIST."  He shot his cuffs, then ran a thin, black plastic comb through his hair. "Besides, th' snots deserved it."

"I hate to admit it," said Adam, resentfully, "but it's true."  He added, angrily, "True for that little blonde girl and the boys!  But not for the girl in black!"

"Adam, how can you say that?"  Her husband looked abashed as Barbara continued, with heat, "It's one thing to scare adults, but you have no compunctions about terrifying _children_!"

" _I'M A POLTERGEIST._ "  Beetlejuice spread his arms and looked at Adam with a _What the hell?_ expression.

"We haven't been dead that long."  Adam shifted uncomfortably.  "We don't know all the Rules."  With embarrassment he muttered, "We left the Handbook in our h...in our original house."

"Basic human decency should be the same, dead or alive!" said Barbara.

"Welp, I never had any."  Beetlejuice smirked.  "Stop interferin' in my business.  I'da thought you'd have learned that a _while_ ago.  Get a death, already."

The ghost turned to follow the car.  It was nowhere to be seen.

Beetlejuice swore.  He flew twenty feet straight up, searching.  Stanger's car was headed back, but because the road forked the ghost couldn't tell from where.

 _Doesn't matter,_ Beetlejuice snorted to himself.  _It's a small village. Th' brat's got t' go t' school.  I'll find her sooner or later._

*  *  *  *

"No!" Delia's tone was as hard as one of her sculptures.

Both she and Lydia looked at Charles Deetz, waiting for his inevitable agreement. Lydia held the kitten up to her cheek so her father couldn't miss both her and its big eyes, and readied to launch her prepared argument.

“Yes,” said Charles.

It took several seconds for his words to register with his daughter and his wife.

“Charles.” Delia gripped the elbow of his forest green cardigan. “I want a word with you in the kitchen, _pleeeze_..”

Lydia stood close to the living room door, the better to hear the discussion in the kitchen across the hall.

“Did you just contradict me? In front of Lydia?”

“Honey, I think a kitten would be good for her. She's been uprooted from everything she's ever known. Her mother hasn't communicated in years. She's never been good at socializing with other kids. Raising a kitten might ground her.”

“The _smell_ , Charles! The litter box! The drifts of fur that will get in my paintings! Hairballs, Charles! _Hairballs!_ ”

“We've already contracted with a cleaning service. And I'm sure Lydia will take care of the other things. If she can stand the smell of developer and fixer, she can handle scooping out a litter box. She needs to feel responsible for something other than herself.”

Lydia didn't appreciate her father promising what she would or would not do, even if she'd already planned to do everything necessary to look after the kitten. But at least, for one astonishing moment, he was siding with her over Delia. Maybe the move _would_ calm his nerves, after all.  Whatever the reason he was indulging her, she wasn't going to question it.

"Thank you, Father!" said Lydia, when her parents returned to the living room. She pecked him on the cheek.  She grinned at the kitten.  "His name is," she paused for effect, " _Percy_."

Delia's pert nose crinkled.  "Considering how you _love_ Halloween, I'd think you'd name a black cat Shadow, or Midnight, or Magic.  Why _Percy_?"

"That's the name on the tombstone nearest to him when I found him."

"That's a tad _morbid_."  Delia paused, then rolled her eyes.  "Of course.  This is _you_ we're talking about."

"He'll stay in my room until he adjusts!"  Lydia kissed her father again, then lugged the kitten and his needs up to her room, gleeful with her good luck.

Of course, Lydia didn't tell her parents, or Mr. Stanger, about the weirdo in the cemetery.  As she set up Percy's litter box in her bathroom and placed him in it, she wondered if she should have told the adults all that had happened that afternoon.  The man might not just have been playing a sick joke.   Maybe the man was recording it to put online somewhere.   But what if he was a truly disturbed person?  She couldn't shake the memory of the frightening, cold aura that had emanated from him, and the certainty that he'd followed her into the road.  Someone just playing a prank would have stayed in the cemetery to gloat, or hide.  This man had been angry.  _Very_ angry.

"If Father knew," Lydia confided to the kitten as he kicked litter, "he wouldn't let me out of the house without a security camera strapped to my head and a GPS chip in my arm.  Besides," she watched Percy cautiously sniff around the bathroom, "I bet the other kids told _their_ parents.  There'll probably be police cars driving around all night."  She whispered, sincerely, "I hope they catch him."

*  *  *  *  *

 _Of course those stinkwads didn't call th' police.  They're not gonna admit t'_ _ **anyone**_ _that they were so scared they wet themselves._ Beetlejuice chuckled with relish.  But irritation replaced his levity as he floated, cross-legged, one hundred feet above the ground, searching for the brat in black.

Sunday night villagers put out their trash for Monday morning pick-up.  For families this was almost exclusively the kids' chore.  From his vantage point, the cool October night breeze tousling his yellow hair, the ghost saw the lights of home and garage doors opening, and children of various ages resentfully hauling bags to cans and cans to curbs.

Beetlejuice squinted.  Girls, boys, white, a few black or brown, jeans, t-shirts, pajamas.... All were village kids who'd been born here, none new.  He recognized the tremulous girl he'd heard called Prudence, and, further down the street, the horse-faced kid named Bertha.  Bertha and Prudence, named after their respective great-grandmothers, whom the poltergeist had sent angrily packing to the Neitherworld when he moved into the graveyard.

Besides the Brewsters, there was only one new family in the village.  In mid-air, Beetlejuice turned.

The lights were on in the Maitland's house.  It was now officially occupied by the living.

The ghost soared toward the big house on the big hill.

*  *  *  *  *

_This **can't** be right._

Lydia examined the developed film drying from clips on string stretched across the darkroom Father had built for her in the spacious basement.  She snipped a segment, slipped it into the enlarger's film carrier, and adjusted the focus knob.  The image thrown on the baseboard below sprang into clarity.

"Why isn't he in _any_ of these?" she said, frustrated and confused.

In frame after frame, the cemetery weirdo was nowhere to be seen.  Everything else was there, the trees, the caretaker's building, the tombstones, even a few frames with Claire and the boys in the background,  running out through the gate.  But no grown man in a torn, filthy striped suit.

"I pointed the camera right at him!  I stuck it right in his face!"  Lydia enlarged the frames.  Still nothing.  "Maybe...maybe his white makeup reflected the flash?"  But if that had happened, there'd be nothing in the photograph but the flare.  The pictures were absolutely normal, except that the man, who wasn't small, who'd been directly in front of her, wasn't there.

 _Maybe when I develop these he'll show up._   Lydia knew it wouldn't work that way.  If he wasn't in the negative, he wasn't going to suddenly appear in the finished picture.

Lydia stepped back, dumbfounded.

"Lydia!"  Delia's voice penetrated the basement door like a sledgehammer.

" _Ugh._ "  Lydia gritted her teeth, then made her voice agreeable.  " _Yes_ , Delia?"

"Trash night!"  Della's voice was suspiciously sing-song.  "We don't have the luxury of a trash chute anymore, thanks very much to your FATH-er."

Lydia shut off the enlarger and heavily walked upstairs.

*  *  *  *

When they couldn't bear what the people who bought their house were doing to it, Barbara and Adam Maitland filled out an Extreme Duress Application with the Office of Housing and Haunting Perimeters.  While they waited for the wheels of bureaucracy to grind, Beetlejuice had offered his services as a bio-exorcist.  He gave a demonstration on the couple, the Deetzes, when they visited to inspect the house's evisceration. Beetlejuice saw no evidence of children. Being rich New York City snobs, why would they want kids?

The Maitlands were appalled by the poltergeist's attack.  Their application went through with surprising speed, probably because the Office didn't want the poltergeist to have any more excuses to terrorize the living -- as if he needed excuses.  The big hardware store and its side and back yards were assigned to the Maitlands, and the house, under renovation and unoccupied, was unassigned.

Beetlejuice had ignored the house during its reconstruction.  But that week moving vans chugged up the long, twisting drive, so he sniffed around.  These people had a lot of crap. He remembered now that none of it looked like kids' belongings. The girl who'd made a fool of him couldn't live _there._

 _Still_ , thought the ghost as he approached the house, encased in his bad mood, _may as well take a look_.

*  *  *  *

"Shoo!  Get away!" Lydia yelled.

The unblinking eyes of the raccoon in the open garbage can reflected the back porch light.

The girl dropped the trash bags and waved her arms.  The raccoon remained unmoved.

The girl put her hands on her hips.  "I'm not afraid of you!  I've seen _rats_ bigger than you!"  This was a lie.  She'd seen rats the size of squirrels, and the occasional unfriendly stray dog, but never the urban raccoons other people had claimed to have seen.

Sighing, Lydia watched the poor creature grab a mouthful of noodles.  All week, while the kitchen was being organized, the family had eaten take-out from a Chinese buffet, the only "ethnic" restaurant in the surrounding area.

"Sorry it's Cantonese and not Szechuan," said Lydia sarcastically, recalling Delia's indignation at the limits of dining establishments.  When Charles pointed out that the only other take-out was Vinnie's Pizzeria, the Mondo Mall's T.G.I. Fridays, and the Dew Drop Inn, her step-mother shut her mouth and masticated with rancor.  "Believe me, you don't want to come back when all the scraps are from _Delia's_ cooking."

The raccoon lifted its head.  It sniffed.  It jumped to the ground and ran.

Judging that this departure must be normal raccoon behavior, Lydia sighed, heaved the garbage bags into the plastic container, and secured it shut.  The breeze was colder, and smelled strange.  Lifting her head, Lydia could just make out the village's downtown, such as it was, and the cemetery.  She wondered if she'd ever get used to this darkness, compared to New York.  The one benefit was the stars; she'd never seen so many, and so clearly.

Lydia gave one last look at the graveyard, which had no lights, not even one on the caretaker's building.

_Why didn't that man show up in the photos? How could that happen?  Maybe my aim was off.  I was scared, I was in a hurry.  I must have just...missed him._

Dissatisfied with that conclusion, Lydia headed up the back porch steps.

*  *  *  *

The raccoon hissed at the bigger, much more powerful predator it had sensed approaching, and ducked into the shrubs.

Beetlejuice ignored it, fixated on the figure silhouetted on the back porch.  _I don't remember wifey bein' so short._

The back door closed and locked.

The ghost swung around the side of the house.  All the curtains were drawn.  Their extraordinarily garish colors prevented him from seeing any movement within.

Still smarting from his failure to scare the little Goth drip, Beetlejuice considered taking it out on these newbies by giving them a hellish night.  He snickered in delight at the scheme, and swept up to a second story window, whose light had just snapped off behind its curtains.

 _Waitaminnit_.  Beetlejuice paused, frowning.  _Me scaring the crap outta the new owners might give Adam and Babs a guilty but happy twinge of revenge.  And the last thing I wanna do is anything_ _ **they'd**_ _like.  Naw.  I don't want to bring any more attention to myself, not just now.  I'll bide my time, let the village feel nice and safe and normal, and find that kid._ _ **Then**_ _I'll have some fun!_

Just as the ghost turned to leave he heard through the window, "Goodnight, Percy."

 _Percy?_   Beetlejuice guffawed silently.  _Wifey married some dork named_ _ **Percy**_ _?  What losers!_

With a snort, he headed for the door to the Neitherworld.  He needed a drink.


	2. Chapter 2

"Who's _that_?"

Lydia didn't react to the whispers from the cluster of girls in the hall.  They clutched their text books close to their chests as she passed, as if shielding themselves from attack or contagion.  What on earth made her stand out, other than being new, was beyond her.  Her hair was shiny blue-black and straight, but that wasn't extraordinary.  _Sure,_ Lydia thought, _my skin's pale, but I'm hardly more Caucasian than most of the New Englanders_.  She was dressed in a school uniform identical to theirs.  The one difference was Lydia's large, black messenger bag.  Backpacks weren't allowed, so students carried their books in their arms or tote bags.  They eyed Lydia's bag as if it were illegal.

Lydia stowed her bag in her locker's top shelf, shut its door, spun the combination, took a deep breath, and turned.  The clump of girls froze like rabbits.

"Hi."  _Smile, Lydia,_ _ **smile**_ , Delia had advised her this morning before she left.  _That way you_ _ **might**_ _not look like someone planning_ _ **murder.**_   "I'm trying to find Room 31.  I--"

The girls moved off as one, heads bent together, whispering among themselves.

"Oh joy,"  said Lydia.  "It's just like home."

*  *  *  *  *

 _Dammit, she's not here._   Beetlejuice was perched on top of the school bus parked in front of Peaceful Pines Junior High.  The school had only the one bus, which fetched the kids from outside the village.  The in-town children walked, biked, or were driven.  The poltergeist had been watching the main entrance since the door was unlocked.  The black-haired girl was nowhere to be seen.

Exasperated,  the ghost spitefully snapped his fingers.  An interior school alarm sounded, quickly followed by the screams of teachers, students, the janitor, and even the principal, as they ran out, soaked from the sprinkler system.

Beetlejuice stuffed his hands in his pants pockets and thought hard.  It wasn't easy; he'd had a fitful night.  Ginger had banged half of her eight legs on his bedroom wall.  "Stop pacin' already!  Some of us are tryin' to get some shut-eye!"

"Shaddup if ya don't want me raisin' th' rent!" he'd threatened.

The ghost sat on the bus' roof, sulking.  No one bested him _.  Ever_.  But the _one time_ it happened it was a scrawny baby Goth.  It galled him.  He couldn't rest until she was sobbing hysterically, crying for Mommy and Daddy.

Beetlejuice remembered the camera.  It was new, not vintage.  And he knew, since ghosts can cruise the internet if they manage to scare a stupid realtor named Jane off her computer while it was on, that the model was expensive.  Which meant 'rents with money.  Sure, the thing could've been a present from a well-to-do relative.  But film like that needed a darkroom, and film and darkroom crap cost bucks.

 _And a family with bucks in the back ass-end of nowhere_ , thought Beetlejuice as he floated straight up from the bus and the wet, loud chaos below, _would send their precious dumplin' to a private girls school._

He snapped his fingers and vanished.

*  *  *  *

"We have so many new students this year!"  Miss Blithe beamed at Lydia, who sat in a desk by the window, and the blonde who sat at the opposite side of the room, who, roll-call had revealed, was named Claire Brewster.

Claire was already seated and surrounded by kids when Lydia finally located the second-floor classroom.  The girl's sudden stop in mid-sentence and widening eyes told Lydia that she was recognized.  But the girl immediately looked away and made a thin, high-pitched laugh in reply to something one of her acolytes said.  They were ignoring her so hard the air almost shimmered.

"I think it would be a grand thing if we introduced our new students and neighbors to Peaceful Pines with....wait for it!"  Miss Blithe looked each of the ten girls, who were not waiting, or caring, in the eye.  "A field trip tomorrow!"

Lydia perked up.  She loved field trips.  Sure, there was no Metropolitan Opera or Guggenheim here, but anything that got her out of this stifling room with these stifling kids would be a relief.  And she _did_ like the town, because she loved old things, and Peaceful Pines was full of those.

"Can anyone suggest where our adventure should take us?" piped the teacher.

Silence.

Claire Brewster waved her hand like overdone pasta.

"YES, Miss Brewster!"

"Like, the Mondo Mall."  Half the girls tittered.

"Um, uh huh, that's a possibility," said Miss Blithe, in a way that indicated the exact opposite of her words.  She said, with firmness that hinted desperation, "Anyone else?"

Lydia raised her hand.

"Ah!  Miss..."  The teacher's expression faltered.  Her eyes glanced down at the seating chart, then snapped back to Lydia.  "Miss Deetz!"

"The cemetery."

All heads swiveled to stare at her.

"It's a great way to learn the town's history," Lydia improvised, quickly. "And we can bring big sheets of white paper and pencils, to do tombstone rubbings!"  She demonstrated to the blank faces by holding aloft a piece of paper and moving her pencil up and down in front of it.  In order to secure the teacher's interest, Lydia added what an educator like Miss Blithe can't resist: Familial holiday gifts.  "We can give them to our parents for Halloween!"

"What a wonderful idea!" cried Miss Blithe.

If the girls didn't care for Lydia before, they disliked her intently now.  Before, the worst they expected from a field trip was an incredibly dull stroll.  Now they not only had to _make_ artsy things, but make them with the obligation to give them to indifferent adults.

Lydia wasn't about to let on that her true motivation was to get a good look at the cemetery again, but in a group and with an adult, for safety.  Maybe she'd find some evidence of what that wacko man was up to.  She was about to raise her hand and ask Miss Blithe if the high school had a drama teacher skilled in theatrical makeup when the girl seated in front of her stood up and pointed.

"What the hey?" she said.

Glad for an excuse to disregard the teacher, the girls hurried to the huge windows.

The school was on a small hill, so from the second story they could see the public junior high and high schools across the street and a block away.  Lydia, already seated beside the window, had to stand up to keep from being crushed by her inquisitive classmates.

Kids were running around in front of the junior high like chickens in a yard.  Adults were waving their arms at the volunteer firemen and trying to keep younger children from climbing the fire truck.  Cars were stopping, picking up kids, and driving off.  Lydia wasn't certain, but most of the kids and adults looked as if they'd fallen into a swimming pool.

"Like, first day and somebody started a fire!" laughed Claire.

The majority of girls joined in, yelling, "Fire, oh, fire, save us!" and waving their arms.

"Children!  It's not meet to mock the misfortunes of others.  Seat yourselves."

They did, trying to figure out what the heck she'd said.

A bell rang, startling them all.

"Fire!" squeaked the girl named Prudence O'Hara, her huge glasses shuddering under her fly-away mop of orange hair

"Methinks tis lunch," Miss Blithe reassured her.  "See you anon, girls!"

No one moved.

"It means we can go to lunch and she'll see us later," Lydia translated, standing and picking up her books.

No one thanked her.  They followed Claire out the door, with the exception of Prudence.  Lydia paused at the door and smiled at what she suspected might be a kindred spirit.  Prudence ducked past her and out the door.  Lydia sighed.

*  *  *  *

Miss Shannon's School for Girls never stooped to having a cafeteria.  Besides, the school's population was always so small they never needed one.  Instead, a large meeting room on the first floor had several round tables, all with white tablecloths and real silverware and china plates.  The food was included in tuition, and was, Lydia found with surprise, quite good.

She sat alone at the table in the front corner by the windows, watching the fire truck pull away from the junior high.  When the lunch supervisor was occupied, Lydia took her tray to the interior window that opened to the kitchen, then headed straight for Claire's full table.

The group's laughter halted when she approached.

"You saw him."  Looking directly at Claire, she said, "You saw him in the cemetery."

"What?"  Claire wrinkled her nose.  "What would, like, _moi_ be doing in a _cemetery_?"

"Did you actually say _moi_?"

"Maybe that's where _you_ hang out," said Claire, "since you're, like, _obsessed_ with it.  But I've never been in that stinky old place, like, evah."

"Are you from Los Angeles?" asked Lydia.  "Or are you just trying to create that impression?"

"I'm from Mi- _ami_!"  The blonde girl turned in her seat, her elbow on the back of her chair, and glared.  "And thank you for being all racist!"

"It's called stereotyping," Lydia granted, "but it's not _racist_.  Being Californian isn't a _race_."  She pressed, seriously, "You saw that weirdo in the ghost costume.  I think he might be dangerous.  I think we should both say something to the police."

"Like, get a-WAY from me!  I don't have any idea what you're talking about.  You New Yorkers are all so _paranoid_."

" _Now_ who's stereotyping."  Seeing this was a waste of time, Lydia growled, "You threw a kitten away in a bag _to die_.  _You attempted murder._ "

"I don't have kittens!  Mother won't even allow a cat anywhere, like, in the vicinity!  Are you just so pathetic that you have to make things up for attention?  It must suck to, like, be _you_."

Claire abruptly yanked her chair to face away from the black-haired girl.  The five other girls at the table snorted and treated Lydia as if she had vanished from the room.

"Attempted murderess," said Lydia, as she walked out.

*  *  *  *

The sunshine was warm for late October.  Lydia wandered into the eating area behind the school, a few small benches under scattered maple trees.  There was Prudence and another, tall girl who wasn't in her class, sitting under a sugar maple.  They were watching her.

Lydia smiled and waved.

Instantly they turned around and hunched over their books.

 _Peaceful Pines is exactly like New York City_ , Lydia thought, sitting on a bench and trying not to frown too obviously. _I am alone.  Utterly alone._   To distract herself, she took out her book.

She had no idea she was being watched.

*  *  *  *

 _ **There**_ _ya are, ya frickin' littl_ e _punk!_ Beetlejuice was incorporeal, a thin, smoky mist.  Even so, he kept behind a tree trunk, peering around it cautiously.  It'd be just his luck if this kid was one of those rare freaks who could sense ghosts.

She was alone.  Absolutely alone.  The other girls, the ones the ghost named Burp and Prude, had hurried inside as if to avoid her.

 _So I'm gonna..._ Beetlejuice hesitated.  _Gonna what?_   He'd been so pissed off this whole time he hadn't considered exactly how he was going to get his revenge.  It had to be traumatic.  She also had to realize that it was _him_ , the ghost from the cemetery, so she'd feel the full brunt of regretting she'd ever messed with him.  But his Zombie Corpse act had barely fazed her.  It helped, when seeking revenge on the living, to know their individual fears. He hadn't been able to observe her for clues.

_Spiders are always good. Naw, that fat spider in the graveyard didn't bother her. She actually **liked** it..._

The school bell rang.  Lydia got up and walked into the school.

 _SON OF A---_ Swearing profusely at himself, Beetlejuice floated to the window.  He couldn't see where the snot was headed.  He soared to the second story, but all the blinds had been pulled down against the sunlight slanting in.

Fuming, the poltergeist sat on top of the school sign, crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the knee.  _Fine, that's_ _ **fine**_ _.  She'll be comin' out.  I can wait._ He'd bide his time thinking up how to terrify her.

*  *  *  *

"He walked downstairs," Lydia read, breathlessly,  "opened his medical bag on the chair, took something out of it and held it in his hands. Something rustled down the hall. Something very small and very quiet. Jeffers turned rapidly. I had to operate to bring you into this world, he thought. Now I guess I can operate to take you out of it."

She read aloud the rest of the climax of the short story and closed the book.

"So you see," Lydia addressed her classmates, standing at the front of the room beside Miss Blithe's desk, "Ray Bradbury's _The Small Assassin_ was one of the precursors of the killer baby trope, long before _Rosemary's Baby_ and _The Omen_.  I recommend his collection of short stories, _The October Country_ , as perfect Halloween reading."

All eyes in the class were huge and unblinking.

"Well."  Miss Blithe swallowed dryly.  "That's an....unexpected entry to our My Favorite Summer Book recounting.  And read with such....relish."

"Thanks."  Lydia beamed.  "I like to listen to old radio programs, like _Inner Sanctum_ and _The Whistler_.  The actors' voices are so much better at conveying terror than just a lot of blood and guts and broken bones poking through--"

The end of day bell rang.

" _Oh_ thank god," gasped Miss Blithe, her hand fluttering to her chest.  "Remember to have whatever adults in whose care you are sign your field trip permission slips!  And bring cash, because we're going to make a pleasant diversion to Maitlands Hardware, which has all manner of delights!"

*  *  *  *

Beetlejuice's eyes gleamed yellow in the sunset.  His teeth narrowed to razor-sharp points, revealed in a sinister grin.  He focused like a laser on the little, black-haired girl as she headed from the school's entrance to the bike rack.

"Oh mah _gawd_."

The sound was so abrasive the poltergeist glanced away from his prey.  _Oh, fer frick's sake.  Th' blonde_.

"Thanks a ton, Ly-de-ah," Claire yelled from her group.  "We're, like, ever _so_ happy we're all going to visit Lydia Land tomorrow."  She sniggered.  "Maybe you can dig up a _friend_!"

Lydia put her bike lock in her messenger bag, heaved the bag over her head, and set off.

Tempted as he was to spike the tires of the luxury sedan picking up the blonde, Beetlejuice was not going to be diverted from his aim.  He leapt off the sign and instantly became a cold, white breeze, following alongside his intended victim's bicycle.

 _Father, can I be home-schooled?_ Lydia rehearsed her plea in her head.  She mentally answered her question with her father's voice.  _By who, pumpkin?  I do still work, in my home office and back in New York now and then, and your mother, well..._ Lydia pedaled faster, the sooner to get home to her room and to Percy.  _I am so screwed.  Maybe if I don't talk again until, I don't know, graduation, maybe I'll be able to stand school._

Her ankles felt strangely cold, considering the high had been around sixty-five.  Lydia glanced down.

While she pedaled, an icy breeze kept up alongside her, blowing autumn leaves around her bicycle.

 _That shouldn't be happening_ , Lydia thought.  She pedaled faster.

 _Crap, she noticed_.  Beetlejuice stopped.

The breeze disappeared and the leaves settled on the road.  _It's just the mood I'm in, making me paranoid_ , Lydia thought, glumly. _Yup, I'm a paranoid New Yorker, Claire._

Beetlejuice followed, at a distance.

*  *  *  *

Lydia pressed the garage door's automatic opener and led her bike in.

 _She lives here?_   The ghost formed a pale mist around one of the cement sculptures implanted into the extensive lawn that covered the hill.  He gave the sculpture a good look.  _Frick, they'd love this crap in th' Neitherworld._

The house was no longer the Maitland's haunting territory.  There was no barrier to his entry.

Neither Lydia or Delia noticed when the kitchen's triangular clock suddenly developed black and white stripes.

Lydia picked up the mewing kitten.  "Delia...mother.  He's a kitten,  he needs to be fed, _a lot_.  Did you even give him _anything_?"

 _She adopted that thing?_ The ghost snorted.  He had to admit it looked a lot better.

The red-haired woman Beetlejuice remembered haunting was frantically digging through a pile of shiny brochures on a kitchen island with a marble counter and shiny wooden drawers beneath.

 _Jeez, what these morons waste money on_ , the ghost thought.

"Lydia, I've been busy--"

 _Lydia_.  Beetlejuice smiled evilly.  _I know yer name_ _ **now,**_ _kid._

" -- trying to arrange things for our house-warming dinner party!  I don't have time to look after the creature you swore _you_ were going to look after."

"I can't very well look after him while I'm at school."

"Which was exactly my point in not wanting you to keep it!"  Delia waved her hand distractedly toward the corner where the cat's food dish was on a rubber mat.  "I opened a can of something for it."

" _Percy._ "

"Oh, god, yes, _Percy_. How could I forget?"

 _Percy?  That voice I heard last night was hers._   Beetlejuice's yellow eyes widened with realization.  _It was her takin' out the trash.  Just as well.  I wasn't prepared.  Still.  Woulda been nice to throw that raccoon on her._

Lydia examined Percy's bowl as the kitten stropped between her ankles.  "Delia, this is Lipton Cup-a-Soup."

"Really?  How did _that_ get in this house?"

"It needs hot water.  It's just dry pasta.  Kittens don't eat dry pasta.  He's still really young.  He needs kitten food!"

"Lydia--"

 _Here it comes_.  Lydia sighed, opened a can of kitten food, and put it in Percy's dish. The kitten dove in ravenously.

" -- I have invited eight people, eight famous, brilliant, people, who have been in _Vanity Fair, The New York Times, GQ_ , and even _Playbill_ , in an effort to convince them that _no_ , Charles did _not_ have a stroke and that's _not_ why we've moved to New England's rectum--"

 _Whoa_ , thought Beetlejuice.

" _Ew._   **No** ," said Lydia.

" -- and that we can make this godawful town with no culture into the Summer Arts Center of New York."  Delia snatched up her phone with fervor.  "So I am now going to be on my phone to the city for a while."  She added as she dialed, "There's some sort of thing you can warm up in the stove, your father brought it home, OK now, kiss, kiss."  Lydia heard someone pick up.  “Clinton!  Darling!  Oh, god, don't even ask."

Lydia carried Percy and his dish toward the stairs.

"Lydia!"  Delia pulled from her phone.  "You have a _surprise_ in your room!"

"I can hardly wait," Lydia mumbled with dread.

Beetlejuice stared at the red-headed woman nattering on the phone.  _Jeezus.  No wonder the Maitlands couldn't stand ya._

In an instant he was upstairs.  He possessed a vase on a table in the landing, just before the girl reached the top step.  Maneuvering the kitten and the dish with difficulty, she opened the second door on the right.

The girl's scream was loud and sharp.

 _I haven't even done anything yet_ , thought Beetlejuice. He swept past her and possessed the first thing he came in contact with.

Lydia didn't notice her hairbrush on the small bureau with a big mirror near her bed had suddenly become striped. She was too busy yelling, “Mother! _My room!_ ”

"Clinton, can you hold?" said Delia as she came up the stairs.  She smiled in that wide, insincere way she had.

"My skeleton window curtains!"  Lydia placed Percy in his carrier and pointed angrily at her bed.  "My red spider web bed curtains!"

"Evey day can't be _Halloween_ , dear."

"It is for me!  _Why_ would you think I'd like yellow curtains with _big yellow bows_?!"

"I didn't," said Delia, casually.  "We're having a dinner party on Halloween, Lydia, in case you've forgotten."

" _You're_ having it!  I'll be out trick-or-treating, avoiding it!"

"No, you'll be _here_ , in the incredible ruby velvet Karen Willis Homes dress I bought you.  There are going to be highly influential people here, Lydia, and they'll be touring this house, including _your_ room.  You want to make a _good impression_ , and childish eeky, creepy decor is _not_ the way to do it.  It's time you started making connections that will further your future career."

"I'm _twelve_!"

"Never too soon to start."

 _Jeezus_ , thought Beetlejuice.

"How are any of those people going to help me be a photojournalist?!"

"Oh, you don't want to be that, really.  It's a phase."

"My liking cherry Pop-tarts was a phase!  Photography is my _life's work_!"

"You're twelve.  What do you know?"  Delia headed out the door.

"The minute the party's over I'm putting my real curtains back up!"  Lydia yelled after her.

"Good luck with that.  They're in the trash."

"MOTHER!"

"Clinton?  Still there?" Delia said into the phone as she went downstairs.  "I _know_.  I'm _dreading_ the Teenage Years, I can't tell you..."

Lydia launched herself onto her bed and yelled into a pillow. "ARGH!  Can't I have one place, _one place_ , that's all my own?!"  She turned onto her back and grimaced at the yellow bed curtains.  She frowned as the day unscrolled through her memory.  She muttered,  "And one friend.  Just _one_."

 _What an emotional kid._   Beetlejuice examined her wiping her face with her hand and ineffectually throwing another pillow at the curtains.  _Crap, I can't decide who I wanna haunt more, the squirt or her parents._

An idea blossomed poisonously.  _She's already pretty upset, so scaring her won't be as powerful as I want.  Buuut.... This kid had a smooshy heart.  Th' best way to stomp on it is not to scare_ _ **her.**_

Suppressing an evil cackle, the ghost vanished.

*  *  *  *

Delia clicked madly on the keyboard of the laptop on the kitchen's island.  "There is not _one_ caterer in this town!" she barked.  "We _are_ in Hell!"

Charles could hear her from his vintage wingback chair by the fireplace in the living room across the hall.  He expected he'd have heard her if he was locked in the third-story attic.  "All I care is it's as peaceful as advertised,"  he called back as he picked up the TV remote from the lamp stand next to his chair.  "We have Internet, we have streaming service, what more do we need?"  As a concession to his wife, he added, "One good dinner out here at this spacious house, and next summer we'll have a little colony of New Yorkers buying up this cheap real estate.  That library would make great luxury condos."

"We'll have to convince Sweet Oregano Catering to open a branch here, or no one will stay.  I need to fetch something from the garage!"

Charles was happy to hear the closing of the door connecting the kitchen to a short hall to the garbage.  He'd have ten or fifteen minutes of quiet and bliss.  He aimed the remote at the TV.

Flames shot up in the cold fireplace.  Green flames.

Charles stared at them.  He pointed the remote at his face and clicked the ON button repeatedly.  The little red light was lit, but the TV remained dead.

The fire hissed and leaped.

"Delia," called Charles, "do we have a remote-controlled gas fireplace now?"  He paused and stared as black and white stripes slithered up the arm of his chair.

*  *  *  *

High pitched screams made Lydia jump off her bed.

She thudded down the stairs and into the living room.  She gasped.

Her father was in the grip of his chair.  But it wasn't his chair.  Its arms squeezed him like black-and-white striped pythons.  The chair legs had pointed, moldering boots. The chair's head was deathly white, with dry, pale yellow hair struck through with dried mold and hissing serpents.  It ceased its maniacal laughter and grinned at her with pointed teeth, its huge yellow eyes with slit pupils narrowing.  One of the coil-arms slapped across Charles mouth, stifling his yells, while his legs wind-milled helplessly.

"'Member _me_ from the _cemetery_ , babes?"

The raspy, deep voice paralyzed Lydia.

"We've come fer yer daddy, _Lyds_ ," it mocked with icy breath.

The word _daddy_ broke Lydia's terror.  She ran to the fireplace and grabbed the poker.  She beat at the thing's head as hard as she could.

Hissing, the monster-chair released its victim.  Charles hit the floor and froze, stammering, staring as the creature rose on its booted legs, its menacing shadow filling the room.  The dry white lips sneered as it opened its jaws.  Multiple green tongues lashed out.  It reared its arms over its head, its red-tipped fingers becoming talons above Lydia.

"Yer gonna _regret_ that, _brat_!" it hissed.

Without a moment's hesitation, Lydia stabbed the pointed end of the poker at what she assumed was its gut.

She couldn't know that it struck lower.  In Beetlejuice's favorite part of his anatomy.

The poltergeist's eyes bugged, not intentionally.  He made a strangled squeak.

The monster vanished in an explosion of sickly-yellow-green smoke.  The chair, normal, balanced on two legs, then toppled onto its side as if exhausted.  The green fire snuffed out, leaving only a momentary stink, which soon dissipated.

"Father!"  Lydia threw the poker aside and knelt next to the man on the carpet.  She firmly slapped both his cheeks.  "Are you OK?"

"Charles!"  Delia hurried in.  She stopped, looking at the over-turned chair, rumpled area rug, and poker on the hardwood floor.  " _What_ have you two been _doing_?"

"Y-y-you saw it, didn't you?"  Charles clenched his daughter's black t-shirt, sputtering hysterically.  "You _saw_ it!"

Delia interrupted before Lydia, who was trying to shake her own shock, could open her mouth.  "Saw what, Charles?"

"Yellow eyes!"  Charles knelt on the disheveled rug, his hands going every which way as he tried to form a description.  "Fangs!"  He put his forefingers in front of his mouth to illustrate.  "On me!  It was on me!"  He pointed accusingly at the chair.  "Chair!  Chair!  Attacked!"

Delia checked Lydia for conformation.

Lydia was speechless.  _How can I say what I saw?  It...it can't have been real._

"Oh, god, Charles."  Delia breathed a hefty, long-suffering sigh and stuck her hands on her hips.  "One of those garbage raccoons got in the house.  It climbed the back of your chair and jumped on you."

"Not raccoon!"  Charles raised both arms over his head and bent his fingers like claws, a near perfect imitation of the chair-monster.  "GRRR!" he insisted.

Delia looked at Lydia impatiently, raising a thin eyebrow.

Lydia took a deep breath.  "It was a raccoon.  You surprised it, Father, and it...sort of lost it."

Her father's confused, frightened stare stung her.  Lydia felt her betrayal deeply.  _But what can I say?  Yes, Delia, yes, Father, the chair was trying to kill you, and then it was going to kill me.  Say, can we have hot chocolate now?  Bet you want some brandy in yours, Daddy._

"There, there, Char-els," Delia cooed, helping him to his shaking feet, "the move has just been an _itsy_ too much for you.  Lydia, straighten the chair."  Lydia did.  Delia steered her husband toward it.  He mewed in fright, trying to avoid contact with it.  His wife insisted.  Slowly, as if lowering himself onto a molten lava, he clenched his eyes shut and sat down.

"See?"  Delia grinned triumphantly.  "Now," she effortlessly clicked on the huge, flatscreen television, "you just watch some relaxing CNN Money Week while I warm you a toddy."

 _I could use one_ , Lydia thought.

Delia went _psst_ at her step-daughter and indicated the kitchen.  Sighing, the girl followed her.

"Is that thing still in the house?" Delia whispered.

 _I wonder._   "No, Mother.  I....opened the front door and chased it out."  Another lie.  Lydia never lied to her parents.  Now she'd done it twice.

"Was your father bitten or scratched?"  With horror, Delia added, "Does he need a _rabies shot_?"

 _Thanks for asking if_ _ **I**_ _was bitten_.  "No, it didn't touch him.  Only scared him."

"I better call Animal Control tomorrow."

"No!"  Not wanting innocent animals to suffer because of her covering up the truth, Lydia said, "I..I think I left the back door open a crack when I took out the trash last night.  Of course it'd wander in, I mean, it's warm in here, and smells of food.  It's my fault."

"Young lady."  Delia rolled her eyes.  "God, you're _just_ going to have to face the fact that you have more responsibility here!  We don't have Manuel the doorman any more."

 _You didn't like_ _ **him**_ _any more than you like raccoons_ , Lydia thought at her step-mother, grimly.  _He was one of_ _ **those**_ _people from one of_ _ **those**_ _countries_.

"No more slip-ups!"  Delia opened the impressively stocked liquor cabinet.  "Your father came here for rest."

"Which is why you're going to have a huge dinner party."

"Exactly!"

As Delia filled two glasses with whatever, Lydia said, "I'm going to check the back door."

"Good.  You do that."

Her father was fixed on the CNN host describing what a killing Wall Street was making, so he didn't notice his daughter grab the poker.  Lydia opened the back door cautiously.  She stood on the back porch, poker gripped tightly, and looked around the hill and the village.

 _That was no man in a costume._ Lydia loved science; it was a fascination that came with the chemistry needed to develop photographs.  But there was no plausible scientific explanation for what she saw.

Lydia's jaw clenched, half in fright, half in anger.  He -- it -- had to be the same thing she'd faced the day before, because it knew about the cemetery.  It found where she lived.  Worse, it knew her name.

 _I'm going to ask Miss Blithe if the field trip can make another diversion tomorrow_ , Lydia thought.  _To the library.  I need a book.  On ghosts._

*  *  *  *

Jacques LaLean and Ginger were in the Roadhouse's communal kitchen, discussing this and that.

The kitchen door slammed open.

With a scowl that curdled the milk Jacques was pouring, eyes blazing, Beetlejuice stomped past them.  He furiously yanked open the freezer, grabbed a cold compress, slapped it on his crotch, slammed the freezer shut, and waddled out of the room.

They heard his apartment door bang shut like an explosion.

"Ask," said Jacques, "this I am not even going to do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scene with Charles' chair was inspired by Beetlejuice the Animated Series art from 1989, which you can see on my tumblr: https://rtfics.tumblr.com/post/179482625316/beetlejuice-art-inspiration
> 
> I absolutely love Beetlejuice's evil glee as he's about to pounce on oblivious Charles.


	3. Chapter 3

“I'd like this, please, Mr. Stanger.” Lydia set the glass bottle labeled _Maitland Hardware's Olde Tyme Homemade Lemonade_ on the counter. She petted the old wood lovingly.

“You've taken to the store.” The man smiled as he rang up her purchase on the brass cash register.

“I love it. Old things seem so well made. With love. You know?”

“It's called craftsmanship.” He placed her change in her open palm. “You build something with skill and patience born from years of training, it's the same as love.”

“Gag me.” Claire Brewster stuck out her tongue and pretended to choke.

“I apologize for my classmate,” said Lydia, unscrewing the bottle's lid.

“Not for you to apologize for the rudeness of others, but thank you for it.” Mr. Stanger indicated the drink. “I should have warned you before you bought it, but that's an old recipe, made with lots of real lemon juice. Some find it too strong.”

“That's OK, I like it strong. I don't have much of a sweet tooth. But thanks for the warning.”

"Do you, like, have candy made in _this century_?" said Claire Brewster.

Lydia's class was examining the impressive array in Maitland Hardware's glass candy counter.  Most of the choices were things none of them had ever heard of.

"You must indulge, ladies!"  Miss Blithe excitedly listed, "Ribbon candy!  Root beer barrels!  Licorice Bulls-Eyes!"  The teacher held aloft a small, brown hard candy that was dusted with something white.  "Horehound!"

Claire and her following, which was most of the class, sputtered at the pronunciation.

"Grow up."  Lydia rolled her eyes.  "It's an old fashioned medicinal lozenge.  It was originally made for dry throats and intestinal gas."

"Very good, Miss Deetz!" For half a second Miss Blithe peered glowingly over her glasses, as if she was going to adopt Lydia as her classroom favorite.  But then she took a better look and her grin tripped, and she looked away.  "Partake of the NECCO Wafers, girls!"

"Candy is for babies," Claire asserted.

The girls holding peppermint sticks stuffed them back in the glass jar.

The blonde girl trained her cold, blue glare at the black-haired girl.  "Why do you, like, know about the _gas_?  Do you  _fart_ all the time?  You _smell_ like it."

Everyone but Prudence laughed.  The small girl with big glasses ducked her head and focused on the butter mints.

_They're so tedious,_ thought Lydia _._   Miss Blithe was oblivious to the constant jabbing Lydia was receiving from her peers.  Either that, or, apparently like all her teachers, Miss Blithe didn't care.

Lydia walked away from them all, toward the kitchen utensils area by the door with a sign that said RESIDENTS ONLY.  _Mr. Stanger must live here_ , she thought, fingering a cheese grater.

It was only when Miss Blithe herded the rest of the class to the wall with lots of framed old photographs that it became quiet enough for Lydia to hear, just barely, two adult voices on the other side of the door.

"We have to warn that little girl that he's following her!" whispered a woman.

_Little girl being followed?_   Looking around to be sure no one was watching, Lydia put her hand on the doorknob.  It was locked.  She pressed her ear against the wood.

"How?" said a man.  "The living can't hear us."

_The_ _ **living**_ _?_   Lydia caught her breath.

"We can move things," said the woman.  "We can write her a note and drop it in front of her."

"Then we need to do it _now_ , before her class leaves.  How can we make sure she finds it and not another girl?"

"Darn, I don't know  Maybe we can distract her away from the others."

"Even if she sees it, why would she believe a note from a stranger?"  The man sounded like he wanted to do this, but he felt they had to be careful, for serious reasons. "We don't even know her name. We don't know if she believes in ghosts.  Maybe she's just playing Goth."

_**Ghosts**?!  Goth!  Oh my god, it's me, they mean me!_

"We have to tell her a way to protect herself!"  The woman was adamant.

" _Can_ he be stopped?  He's too powerful.  Even Juno said so."

"I can hear you!"  Lydia rattled the doorknob.

"Lydia!" called Miss Blithe.

The girl was sure she heard feet carefully descending down a staircase.  "He came to my house!" Lydia called. "That ghost!"

"Miss Deetz!"

Lydia jumped and spun around, her back against the door.

"You may be eremetic on your own time."  The teacher gestured toward the girls down the aisle, who were scowling at her.  "We are gathered, as one, to immerse, as one, in the Romantic milieu."

"Oh lord, those poor children," said the woman on the other side of the door.

"You're not kidding," said Lydia, a little loudly.

She heard a _snurfle_ through the wood.

"No, I kid you not.  Come along!"  Miss Blithe lightly pinched the shoulder of Lydia's uniform and led her back to the class.  "We are off to the library, as you proposed this morn."

A large, framed color photograph made Lydia halt.  She turned to Mr. Stanger.  "Those are the Maitlands, aren't they?"

"Ayup.  Adam and Barbara.  Wonderful, big-hearted people."

"They _drown_ last _April_ ," said Blair, one of the village girls.

"No such thing," Mr. Stanger corrected.  "They had an accident, that's right.  But they just like keeping themselves to themselves.  A lesson most people could live by."

" _Crazy_ ," Blair whispered to the others.

Miss Blithe's expression showed she agreed with her student.  "Thanks ever so for your effusive graciousness, Mr. Stanger.  We are off, my academic wards!  On with the jollity!"

Lagging behind, Lydia was able to connect eyes with the old man.  “Tell them Lydia says hi."  She emphasized as she was at the door, " _Lydia_!"

As the class crossed the street Lydia saw Mr. Stanger give her a thumbs up.

*  *  *  *

Beetlejuice was tempted to form a solid enough appearance so that the kid could see him sitting on the library's peak as her class entered below.  But, he schemed, resentfully, he needed the advantage of surprise.  He rubbed his crotch ruefully.

*  *  *  *

"A singular book, ladies, in both definitions."  This contradicted the children's librarian, who said they could check out five books at a time.  Miss Blithe watched each child.  "And they must be books for _children_ , _not_ for adults.  Also edifying and _educational_." The librarian had said to help themselves to anything they were interested in.

Her tongue in her cheek, Lydia slipped the decidedly not for children _The Temptation of Death: A Study of Poltergeist Phenomena_ toward the librarian.  Whistling jauntily, the librarian scanned Lydia's card, then the book, and surreptitiously slid it back to her.  Lydia grinned and nodded thanks, and shoved the book into her black messenger bag.

"And what did you just acquire, Miss Deetz?" asked Miss Blithe.

"Nancy Drew," Lydia lied, almost effortlessly.

"Oh, excellent!  The classics are eternal!"

"I guess that's why they're called classics."

Her teacher called out, much to the annoyance of the Senior Ladies Mahjong Club nearby,  "Time to check out your tomes, young adventurers!  We must excelsior!"

*  *  *  *

Movement across the street attracted Beetlejuice's attention.

From their open second-story window, Babs and Adam waved at him in sweeping NO! gestures.

Beetlejuice stood up and put his hand to his ear.  "Whazzat, honey?"

The poltergeist could barely hear the woman shout, "Don't you _dare_!"

Beetlejuice grinned maliciously.  He turned around, unzipped, yanked up his jacket, and dropped trou.

From between his knees he watched as upside-down Barbara went ballistic, then Adam pulled her away so _he_ could threaten him.

" _My_!  Whut language!"  Beetlejuice zipped up and turned around again. "Good thing th' kids can't hear ya."

Below, the library doors opened.  The class followed their teacher down the marble steps.

The poltergeist winked at the furious, impotent ghosts.  He called, in a cultured voice, "Ever so sorry, but I have an appointment.  _Toodles_."  He vanished with a clap of thunder.

*  *  *  *

Lydia looked up.  Where did the thunder come from?  The sky had been clear and vibrant blue all morning.  The temperature was easily in the upper 60s, unseasonably warm.

Now, as the class passed under the cemetery's arched iron entrance, a scrim of gray clouds scudded across the sky with alarming speed.  The sunlight dimmed.

"Spread out, ladies! Find a stone with a memorable memoriam."  Miss Blithe handed out large sheets of white paper and soft graphite pencils. “Be certain to make a good impression, so you'll make a good impression!” She chuckled at her cleverness.

The girls grumbled. Rather than spreading out among the tombstones, they were satellites of Claire, who was sticking to the gravel road from the caretaker's building to the gate. Lydia noticed her glancing around warily.

_I bet she's wondering where he – it – is, too_. Faking that she was choosing a tombstone, Lydia searched the area around the small building. She peeked in its tiny, dirty windows. It was impossible to tell whether anyone had used it as a hide-out. There were no tracks or scuffs in the gravel road where the man – no, he most certainly wasn't human – had dragged his feet in pursuit of Claire and the boys. Yet there were tracks where the kids had run, tripped, and scrambled to their feet.

A crack of thunder made her jump.

Dark clouds roiled in as the wind picked up. Prudence's paper flew from her hand and tumbled across the grass. Gusts snatched the sheets from all the girls and tossed them throughout the cemetery.

“Like, my _hair!_ ” Claire complained.

“This was not what the public radio meteorologist forecast, therefore, we are _not_ properly prepared.” Miss Blithe stared at the clouds as if her disapproval was enough to disperse them. “Girls, gather 'round!”

A hoarse whine made the class hesitate.

A dog limped from behind a large headstone. It was the size of very large wolf. It's coat was piebald, white and gray. Its steps were stiff and jerky.

“Oh! It looks like it's hurt!” Lydia cautiously approached.

“Miss Deetz, keep your distance! It may be feral!”

“But it might need help.” Knowing that even a friendly dog will bite when injured, Lydia knelt on one knee, watching as it slowly staggered in the class' direction. “It's OK, boy.”

Tiny hail pelted down, sharp and hard.

“AA!” Claire ineffectively tried to cover her head with her hands. “OW! _Miss Blithe_!”

Holding her skirt down from the wind, which seemed determined to blow it in a revealing way, the teacher shouted, “Girls! To me!”

Lydia glanced over her shoulder, wincing as the hail hit her. “We can't leave this poor--”

The dog's growl became very deep and acidic.

When she looked at it again, Lydia saw rhemy yellow eyes with pus oozing from their corners. Its lower jaw dropped and its tongue, its _green, striped_ tongue, lolled, dripping opaque, greenish saliva. It was then that the girl noticed that the dog wasn't piebald. It was brindled. In black and white stripes.

Lydia gasped.

The dog's snarl filled the cemetery.

“Rabid dog!” Claire screamed.

The girls ran past their teacher, yelling, “Mad dog, mad dog!” Miss Blithe's pale gray eyes widened almost painfully as the dog lunged over Lydia and after the fleeing girls. The teacher shrieked and sped after her class.

The hail instantly transformed into ice-cold rain. Lightning burst from the dark, seething clouds, and struck the iron archway above the cemetery entrance, for an instant illuminating it like red, molten metal. The class fell over each other, then scrambled upright and through the hail like mice. Miss Blithe frantically tried to decide a direction to flee. A tree root humped out of the earth and she tripped on her face, popping a lens from her glasses.

Lydia, her hair soaked, jumped to her feet. The dog stood between her and the gate. Lightning crackled and illuminated the clouds above as the dog, which, she now knew, was never a dog, grinned at her.

In a voice as deep, cold, and threatening as an open grave, it rasped, “Got no poker with ya _now_ , do ya, _brat_?”

Lighting blasted a tree top. Branches plummeted. Girls ran out of the way just in time.

Lydia glanced from the burning treetop to the copper watering can on the hook of the cemetery spigot.

The ghost dog stepped forward, its frothing jaws snapping.

Lightning sizzled overhead. _Good_ , Lydia thought.

The girl dashed for her messenger bag. After grabbing her bottle of lemonade from it, she snatched the watering can and faced the haunted hound.

“Nyah nyah, you can't catch me!” Lydia blew a raspberry at the ghost, then ran.

Furious, Beetlejuice sprang after her, barking insanely.

The class huddled together under a copse of pines, soaked and shivering as the rain-wind heaved the branches back and forth, and didn't witness any of this.

When she reached the open crest of the cemetery's highest hill, Lydia stopped. She yanked off the bottle's lid and poured the remaining lemonade into the copper can.

Beetlejuice ran at her, jaws wide.

“Hold this, doggy!” Lydia jammed the can's handle into the ghost's maw. Startled, he bit down on it. “Good boy!”

While the dog blinked, the girl rushed down the hill to a large marble gravestone in a low area. She threw her vinyl messenger bag on top of it and immediately sat on it, pulling up her legs so that they didn't touch the ground or the tombstone.

So confused it shorted out his haunting, Beetlejuice involuntarily reverted to his characteristic appearance.

Lydia stared.

The ghost glared at her as he held the can. “What th' f---”

A bolt of lightning speared him with a spectacular explosion. Lydia covered her head while melted copper shrapnel flew everywhere.

The top of the hill had nothing but a blackened, smoking spot, circled by tiny flames.

“ _ **Science,**_ _asshole!_ ” Lydia yelled.

The rain and wind immediately ceased. The clouds thinned, allowing in rays of sunshine. A rainbow arched over Peaceful Pines.

Lydia hurried to her shocked classmates, who'd seen the bolt strike the hill top. “It's OK.” She pushed her wet hair out of her face. “It's over.”

* * * *

The class was in the school's large lobby, handing back their sodden towels to the school nurse as the lone school bus pulled into the U-shaped gravel drive to take them all home.

Lydia rubbed the towel on her hair slowly while she listened to the principal, fifth in the long line of the Shannon family, chew out her teacher.

“A thunderstorm! A rabid dog! What possessed you, Miss Blithe? The moment you saw the weather turn you should have returned to the school!” The principal glanced at the Animal Control officer, who looked like she was happy to have something to do besides wrangling raccoons from garbage cans. “Can you imagine the phone calls from parents,” the school receptionist was waving at her, “we're being barraged with? The Brewsters are already threatening legal proceedings!”

“It was a student's idea,” Miss Blithe muttered, angrily. With a jerk of her head she indicated shocked Lydia.

“She's twelve. _You_ are _not._ ” Miss Shannon huffed and headed for her office, gesturing for the officer to follow.

It wasn't until Miss Blithe towered over her that Lydia realized how tall she was. Like her class, the teacher hadn't been able to change clothes. Her uniform clung to her. She looked like a six-foot-two-inch plucked turkey wrapped in wet plaid.

“ _Really_ , Lydia.”

_So much for 'Miss Deetz.'_ The girl's jaw clenched.

“You, who claim expertise is the sciences--”

“I never did! I said I _read_ a lot about--”

“-- waltzed us right into the open during a _lightning storm_.”

“It wasn't even cloudy when we got there!”

“And you drew that diseased, feral mutt to us! Your empathy toward your fellow students is fugacious, and your regard for danger is lackadaisical, at best!”

While Lydia tried to figure out what had just been said, her teacher marched into the school's office. She returned shortly and held a square of paper at the girl.

“Don't open it! You will deliver it, unread, to your caregivers, and they may open and read it!”

“You're sending me home with a note for my parents? I didn't do anything!”

“That is exactly the problem! You should have given me warning that the climatic geniality had reversed!”

“You can't blame _me_ for--”

“Blame? _Blame?_ ” Miss Blithe looked as if she might levitate with suppressed anger and denial. “It is time to go _home_ , young lady. And you will _not_ take your bicycle; all students are to be escorted, safely, on the---”

Lydia was out the door, unlocking her bike while swearing under her breath, and pedaling away before the teacher could come out on the front steps and finish her sentence.

* * * *

“Oh, la la, that Marcel Marceau,” said Jacques LaLean to Ginger as he sat down on the couch in the Roadhouse's communal living room. “He was again at the epicerie. I cannot purchase the lait frais without him nattering on and on.”

Ginger sniffed the air. “Do you smell bacon?”

The Roadhouse's door smashed open so hard a painting fell to the floor.

A blackened shape with blazing yellow eyes and a scowling green overbite stomped by, went down the hall, and slammed the door to Beetlejuice's room, leaving a trail of smoke after it.

“He's been havin' an interesting week,” said Ginger.

* * * *

“But pumpkin,” said Charles, reading the note incredulously, “you love to watch the Weather Channel. You studied about thunderstorms and tornadoes to be ready for the move to the country.”

“I'm sure it was a hoot leading your classmates into a storm,” said Delia. She picked up Percy as if he too were rabid, and held the squirming kitten at length to her step-daughter. “But if someone had been killed --”

“It was sunny when we went to the cemetery! There wasn't any forecast for rain, or even clouds! You can check!”

“Just do better next time, pumpkin, that's all we're asking,” said Charles as he signed the slip.

“ARGH!” Lydia grabbed a can of kitten food and stomped as hard as she could up the stairs, letting every step register her fury at the unfairness.

“Lydia!” said Delia. “You knocked a picture off the wall!”

“GOOD!” She slammed her door.

“I'm sorry for the noise, Percy.” Lydia sat cross-legged on her bed and stoked the kitten as he fed from his bowl in her lap. After he ate as much as she felt was safe for his little stomach, she placed the bowl on her bed table. She held him to her face, and the kitten purred loudly while rubbing his head against her cheek.

“At least _someone_ loves me.” Gently, Lydia placed Percy on one of her huge pillows.

That ghost – yes, _ghost_! – had gotten her into trouble that she didn't deserve. He'd made it personal. Lydia put two pillows against her headboard, sat back, and cracked open _The Temptation of Death: A Study of Poltergeist Phenomena._ Grimly, she turned to the chapter on exorcism.

* * * *

“That obnoxious, calculatin' lil' _pest!_ ” Sitting on his coffin bed and facing the big mirror on his bureau, Beetlejuice peeled more blackened crust from his face. “Pretendin' to be so innocent with those big doe eyes! She made this _personal!_ ” He examined the crust, then stuffed it in his jacket's interior breast pocket. “Save that fer later.”

Beetlejuice pried off his toasted boots with a crowbar. They fell to the floor and crumbled into charcoal. He scratched his chin with the sharp tip of the bar and muttered, “As long as I'm on _this_ side, I can only do so much.”

The poltergeist gleamed vindictively. “But if I _get out_.....” He cackled.

“All I need,” said Beetlejuice, “is an Ouija board, alcohol, and some arrogant teenagers. An' I know _exactly_ where t' get those ingredients.”


	4. Chapter 4

"The perfect spot!" Troy declared.

The skinny, russet-haired 16-year-old white boy with the black t-shirt that read _I Speak Fluent Show Tunes_ pointed at the blackened grass on top the high hill in the cemetery.  The three other teens admired the clear, starry night sky and nodded their approval.

"I can't believe your stupid sister was right about this."  The soft-bodied Filipino boy named Ron, wearing a black hoodie that read TECH WEEK, set down his backpack, weaving a bit as he bent down to touch the lightning strike.

"Dude, it was on the news," said Priscilla, a black girl with a WICKED sweatshirt.  She fruitlessly fished in her jeans pocket for her lighter.  "Did they ever find that rabid dog?"

"Nope.  It could still be here, biding its time to tear out our throats! GROWL!"  Troy's balance wavered.  "I think I'm gonna vom..."  He paused.  "Nope, nope, I'm cool."

"Where's the stuff that weirdo gave us?" Priscilla asked.  She wasn't feeling the effects of the whiskey as strongly as she thought she should, so she chugged from the bottle.  Her coughing forced her to sit down on the scarred grass.

The green-magenta-and-blue-haired white girl, Angela, laughed as her glasses slid down her nose.  She reached to push them back up, but her coordination was shot, and she almost poked herself in the eye.  "Do you mean the booze or the black candles?"

They all chortled and shook their heads.  Who knew what the creep had been really been after?  They had been trying to be as low-key as possible while they leaned against Angela's battered GMC Sierra in Pourin' Down Liquors' parking lot. None of the adults seemed approachable.  They recognized some people from church and the hardware store.  The teens waved nonchalantly, with a reassuring, "Just got out of rehearsal!"  _They_ knew that the _adults_ knew it was bull, but this way they couldn't be accused of underage soliciting for alcohol.

A deep, cultured voice had whispered from around the boxy store's corner.  "I believe we can benefit each other."

The speaker stood in the shadows.  His tailored black suit with white pinstripes and shiny, black leather shoes looked expensive; certainly not anything the teens had ever seen in person.  His blond hair was slicked back under a white Panama hat with a black band.  His head was tilted down just enough so that all they could see of his face was a trace of pale yellow stubble.

A cultured man with money but a stubbly face was beyond intriguing.

Angela had perked up.  "Weeell..... We have _money_. If you'll go _in_ for us..."

"No need for that, young friends."  The cultured man raised his head.  Maybe it was the fluorescent lights reflecting off the sidewalk, or the ambience from the neon signs of beer brands, but the man's coloring looked...off.  He raised a palm and declared, "I must confess I'm in a bit of a spot myself.  I have, hm, clients, shall we shall, who reneged on an engagement.  I had purchased certain, hm, props for said engagement.  I now find myself with _les accessoires_ , but no clients.  I can't use them.  But, perhaps...?

The man had indicated a paper bag in front of him on the sidewalk.

As fascinating as the man was, there was something disturbing about him.  But Ron took up the weighty bag and brought it to the safe distance of the truck.

Ron pulled out two large bottles of Glenlivet.  "Ha ha HA, _whoa man_!"

"Motherlode!" said Troy.

"What?"  Piscilla peered into the bag.  "A Ouija board?  Black candles?"  They stared at the man.

"Oh, you know."  His strangely red-tipped fingers dismissed it all.  "All Hallow's in a New England village.  People want the experience, but they don't want to _pay_."

"How much?" asked Angelica.

The man shrugged indifferently.  "How much have you?"

Pooling their resources, they came up with fifty dollars and twenty-one cents, plus a Starbucks card with five dollars still on it.

"Exactly so!  Just leave the money on the sidewalk and be on your merry way."

They didn't care why the man didn't want to come out from the shadows.  They got in the truck and tore off.  After a half hour guzzling whiskey, the teens, who'd never consumed anything more potent than Pabst Blue Ribbon, managed, somehow, to drive to the cemetery without crashing.

"You think that guy was gaslighting us?" asked Priscilla now, as she tried to form a large square with the four black candles.  It came out a lopsided rectangle.

"Why?  Like he'd be hauling around a bag of occult crap, jus' cuz?"  Troy plopped the Ouija board in what he thought was the center of the not-square.

From the roof of the caretaker's building, Beetlejuice watched this mess with disgust.

Despite appearances, Beetlejuice was incorporeal.  He could manipulate and possess inanimate objects, but there was a veil between he and the living.  While possessing the chair, he could hold Charles.  But as himself, he had no more grip than air. His zombie and rabid dog forms were convincing, but no one was in real danger.

The living didn't know this.

But if he passed to the Living world, Beetlejuice took on a very corporeal form indeed.  He could touch the living.  It was forbidden, of course.  But then, everything Beetlejuice did broke Afterlife Rules.

Whatever ancient powers that had turned him into a poltergeist after death had imposed one Rule even he couldn't break. To pass between the worlds his name had to be said in the eternal three.  He couldn't speak his own name, and he couldn't write it in any way.  He once discovered with great frustration that he couldn't even manipulate plastic children's alphabet magnets on a refrigerator to spell out his name.  The closest he ever came doing that was BthFsTK, which the homeowner mistook for a request from his partner to buy beefsteak.

As a poltergeist it had been easy enough to lift the Ouija board from Sally's Vintage Boutique, the candles from Peaceful Pines Notions & Gifts, and the whiskey from the liquor store.  Bu he'd had to wait all day for some suckers to waltz into his trap.   Teenagers were preferable, of course.  It was Friday night and some came, as he knew they would.

 _C'mon, c'mon, ya losers!_ Beetlejuice fumed impatiently, as the teenagers set up their idea of a seance.  _Dammit, hope they're not too drunk t' actually do it._

Seances had no power.  What mattered was that the teens _believed_ they did.

After several waves of her lighter, and miraculously not setting herself on fire, Priscilla lit the candles, propping them upright with a few stones and twigs.  The four young people sat around the board and passed an almost empty whiskey bottle.  They looked at the Ouija board and its planchette, which were difficult to see in the dark of the unlit cemetery.  The candles were too far from the board to illuminate it.

"How does this work?"  Ron blinked in slow motion.

Troy put a forefinger on the planchette.  The rest followed his example.  "Oh, dead persons!"

"Oh, dead persons!" they echoed.  Angela hiccuped.

"Make thy persona known to us mortals!"

"Make...whatever he said."

"We implode you!"

"Implore."  Priscilla paused, then nodded.  "Implore."

"Implore!"

Green flames exploded from the Ouija board.  The teens screamed and fell backward.

The eerie green flames formed into a greenish, smoky figure floating above them.

"It's the guy!" cried Angela.

"Thanks ever so!"  Beetlejuice's Posh voice was thin and reverberated as if from another dimension.  "Forgive my deception!  But I needed brave young people, tried and true, to engage in the ritual to free me!"

"Oh mah god."  Prisiclla hiccuped.  "You're a Damned soul, aren't you?  Grandma told me about you guys!"

Beetlejuice clutched his hands to his bosom.  "How clever you are!  Yes, yes, my ducklings!  Through no fault of my own I am trapped, betwixt and between the Gloom and the Ether and the Veil, and...Paradise."  He lifted one hand and his eyes heavenward.

Their bleary eyes followed his reach toward the glittering stars.

"Oh, craptastic," whispered awed Ron.

"But you, you can open the Portal!  You must chant my name, three times!"  Beetlejuice's eyes gleamed with tears.  "Will you?"

They nodded as enthusiastically as people with a dangerous level of alcohol in their bloodstream can.

"What's your name?" Angela asked.

"Alas!  My curse is not to speak or write by hand or device the one word that would pass me from eternal grief to eternal bliss!"  Beetlejuice paused.  "So we'll have to, uh, work it out.  In two parts.  OK..."  He rubbed his hands together.  "What's the name of the group who did Abbey Road?"

The teens exchanged glances.

"The...London Road construction crew?" Ron ventured.

"No, dear, the _band_."  They blinked at him. "Rubber Soul?"

"You've got a rubber soul?" asked Priscilla.

"C'mon.  What kind of cultural memory you guys got?  You remember anything from before 2017?"  Beetlejuice forced himself to retain his Posh voice.  "Let's try another.  Who did the song 'Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?'"

"Oh, yeah!  The Stones!" cried Angela, proudly.

"Lawrence Welk!" Priscilla offered.

Beetlejuice slapped his palm over his eyes.  "It's the same name as insects with six legs and antennae."

"Adam Ant!" cried Ron, triumphantly.

"John, Paul, George, and Ringo!" Beetlejuice prompted, grinding his teeth.

"John Paul George was a Pope, not a band," Troy said.

"The Beatles?" Priscilla said.

"That's it!" the ghost yelled, pointing at her.

"Your first name is beetles?"

"Singular, kid, singular!  Now the second part!  What do you drink for breakfast?"

"Tea!"

"Kombucha!"

"Cherry Coke!"

"Coffee, and lots of it!"

"No, look, it grows on trees in the tropics."

"Coffee," Angela insisted.

Beetlejuice's accent evaporated.  "It's th' same color as th' settin' sun."

"Limes!" said Ron.

"Stupid, limes are green!" snapped Angela.  "Sunsets aren't green."

"Lavender?" Troy offered, tying to remember the last time he paid attention to a sunset.  "Purple?"

"Prunes!" cried Priscilla.  "You're Beetle Prune!"

"I hate prune juice."  Angela stuck out her tongue.

"That's it!"  The ghost jabbed a finger in her face.  "The second word!"

"Hate?"

"No, darlin', the word _after_ prune!"

"Juice?"

"YES!"  Beetlejuice shook his fists exultantly.  He calmed himself down and held up his forefingers.  "Now, put th' two together."  To illustrate, he placed his forefingers side by side.

"Beetle juice?" said Troy.

"Wait, wait," he put on his cultured voice again. The ghost couldn't afford to let them get suspicious.  "It doesn't work if each of you say it only once.  One or more of you must speak it three times."

"Like a chant?" asked Angela, eagerly.

_Whut?_ "Ha ha, certainly, if you like!"  _Just_ _ **say it**_ _, ya peacock-haired twit._

The teens looked at each other as if an idea illuminated in their minds simultaneously.

"Oo, oo, I know!"  Priscilla sang, "Attend the tale of Beetlejuice! He died by hanging from a noose!"

"Sweeny Todd!"  the others laughed.

"Oh, whut th' frick are ya _doing_?" Beetlejuice snapped.

"Or this!"  Troy sang, "There, out in the darkness, Beetlejuice is hanging, hanging from a tree..."

"Les Miz!"  they cheered.

"I hadda pick actors,"the poltergeist groaned.  " _Musical theater actors_."

"Beetlejuice'll come out, tomorrow!" Angela sang, " "Betcha bottom dollar that, tomorrow, he'll be free--"

"KNOCK IT OFF!" Beetlejuice yelled.

They halted, fear cutting through the alcohol haze.

Beetlejuice cleared his throat.  "Look," he enunciated, slowly and precisely.  "You want to Open the Magic Portal and send me along to Shangri-La, hm?  All of you want equal credit, of course.  It's a miraculous thing, something you can brag about at school.  'Hey, we released a ghost from Eternal Haunting, bet none of you guys ever did that!'  So, let's make this a joint effort.  You know how to take direction.  On the count of three, all of you will chant my name three times.  Say it with deep sincerity and Opening Night gusto!"

"What'll we see?" asked Troy.

"Oh," whispered the ghost in tones mysterious, "something you just won't believe."

They grinned at each other.

"One...Two..."  Beetlejuice prepared himself.  "Three."

They said it three times, in unison and loud.

The flash of lightning and crash of thunder threw them backwards.  They sat up, wide-eyed and gaping.

Manifesting felt _fantastic_.  Like passing through a hot waterfall and emerging completely dry and vibrant.  How many decades had it been?  Beetlejuice admired himself, now the same in the Living World as he was in the Neitherworld.  He gazed at his red-tipped, claw-like fingers and flexed them.  He smoothed his magenta shirt and striped jacket, and loosened his tie.

The teens paled.  This wasn't what they'd expected.

"Oh. Hey.  Whaddaya know, I'm still here."  Beetlejuice grinned at them hungrily.  They leaned back, shaking.  "Sorry, kidlets. Guess th' Mystic Portal's closed fer today.  So why don't we have a little _fun_?"

*  *  *  *

Lydia was sitting in bed in her spider print pajamas, Percy purring on the pillow beside her, when she heard the crash.

It'd been another pleasantly warm Fall day, so her window was open, making it easier to hear what few sounds Peaceful Pines had at night.  Since her father wasn't particularly studious with his bird-watching, Lydia had taken his binoculars in order to keep an eye on the cemetery.

Enough leaves had fallen from the trees that there was a clear view.  Lydia heard a police siren the same moment she spotted the smoke from a truck.  It had collided with the fire engine parked in front of the fire station next to Maitland's hardware, across the road from the cemetery.

Four teenagers were waving their arms frantically at the police car as the volunteer firefighters put out the flames with extinguishers.  The teens pointed at the cemetery while the officer put his hands on his hips.

Lydia was trying to adjust the binoculars so she could see through the maple leaves when she heard a low, deep, unearthly moan.

She swung the binoculars toward the sound, trying to focus as she did.  Something was in their yard.

Suspiciously, Lydia slowly lowered the binoculars.

He stood in the middle of the front lawn, leaning against one of Delia's sculptures.  He wasn't misty any more.  He looked as solid as any man.  But the aura of ghostliness, of danger, was identical.  No...it was stronger.

The ghost in the striped suit sneered a smile up at her.  He waved his fingers sarcastically, then pointed at his yellow eyes glowing in the dark, then at her eyes watching from the window above.

There was a small clap of thunder and flash of lightning, and he vanished.  A greenish smoke lingered where he'd been, then spread on the cool, night breeze.

Lydia shut the window fiercely, scowling.  "OK.  It's _on_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can see photographs of Troy's t-shirt, and a cemetery exactly how I imagine the one in my story to look, at my tumblr: https://rtfics.tumblr.com/post/179551374766/dont-trust-strangers-with-glenlivet-ouija


	5. Chapter 5

“Can I _help_ you, miss?” asked the priest, looking worried.

_Darn._ Lydia turned slowly, holding one of the small, white plastic bottles with a gold cross on it. She composed what she hoped was an innocent smile and beamed at him.

“Oh. Hello! You're probably Father O'Hara. Are you related to Prudence O'Hara? She's in my class.”

“I am, and I am. Her uncle.” The rusty-haired man's voice was pleasant, but hesitant. His concerned glance indicated Lydia's messenger bag, which she'd filled with nearly all the small bottles of holy water that had been on the wooden table at the back of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. “Is there a situation in which I can be of assistance?”

“Well, you see, my family's new to town.” The lies she'd mentally rehearsed came out with surprising ease. “It's that big house, on the big hill?” Lydia looked sorrowful. “The Maitland's house.”

“Oh, yes.” The priest's sadness was sincere. “Such a wonderful couple. Did you know them....before...?”

“No, sir...uh, Father. I guess Mrs. Butterfield, the realtor, sent my parents photos of the house and was trying to convince Mr. and Mrs. Maitland to sell, but they didn't want to. Then...” Lydia's expression pinched. “Kind of a rotten way to get your dream house.”

The priest pointed at the bag of bottles.

“I just wanted to bless the house.” Lydia chuckled uncomfortably as she looked at her full bag. “It's a _big_ house.”

“I could drop by for a visit, and bless it then,” the priest offered eagerly

“Weeeell, ” this part wasn't a lie, “my parents aren't religious. Y'know, New York City people. So, I'm doing it myself, in secret.” The last part was.

Lydia zipped the bag and hiked it over her shoulder. She held out a twenty-dollar bill to the priest. “I was going to drop it in the donation box, but I'm glad I can give it to you in person.”

The girl hurried past the puzzled priest while he examined the bill. “Happy Halloween!” Noticing the absolute lack of Halloween decorations in or around the church, Lydia added, “Or...not. Bye!”

The church was next to Maitland's Hardware. As she passed on her bike, Lydia gave the second-story windows a fleeting look. Was that a movement behind the curtains? But it could just be the warm breeze. She pedaled home with determination.

* * * * *

“Lydia! Don't get in the way of the caterers!”

Flustered, Delia left the kitchen to handle some crisis with the decorators in the living room. Lydia negotiated through the army of people wearing slate gray shirts, black aprons and ties, with _Sweet Oregano's Catering, Manhattan_ , embroidered in green on the aprons. They were too busy setting up for the dinner party to pay any attention as she ducked into the walk-in pantry.  For a person who hated to cook and avoided it as much as she could, Delia had demanded the kitchen have all the amenities.

Lydia grabbed rock salt, kosher salt, pink Himalayan salt, Lime fresco sea salt, smoked salt, and truffle salt.  Several containers of different herbs joined them in her now empty messenger bag.

Acting completely normal, Lydia strolled down the hall to Delia's studio in the back of the house. She grabbed a roll of twine and two of her step-mother's plastic mixing buckets, then hurried upstairs.  She had a lot to do, and not much time.

* * * * *

"Hello, Lydia!' Mr. Stanger waved from high on the ladder.  He was stringing a black garland with orange jack o' lantern lights across the front of Maitland's Hardware.

"Happy Halloween, Mr. Stanger!"  Lydia waved back.

"We're a little worried about you kids going out trick or treating," said a firefighter putting out pumpkins in front of the station next door.  "That rabid dog hasn't been caught."

"Thanks for your concern, Ms. Montag!  I'm sure it'll be safe!"  _Because I'm going to **make** sure it will.  He won't be haunting **this** Halloween!_

Lydia walked with feigned aloofness, waiting until all the adults decorating the shops and library were distracted.  She scampered like a mouse into the cemetery.

It was eerily quiet.  After listening for a minute Lydia realized the crows and jays were no longer cawing.  There were no bird noises at all, or squirrels and chipmunks running between tombstones and through the trees. She knew why.

_Why didn't he kill me?  Or hurt me, at least?_   Lydia tried to sense where he was, exactly, but she was distracted by the perplexing thoughts she'd had since she woke that morning.  _He's so powerful lightning can't get rid of him, not permanently. He could squash me like a bug.  It's obvious he can get in my house.  He could have attacked me last night.  Why didn't he?_

The book said poltergeists wanted fear.  _Is he goading me, trying to make me afraid?_ Lydia wondered.  She blinked, considering this. _Why_ ** _aren't_** _I more afraid than I am?_

Atop the caretaker's building, Beetlejuice's narrowed eyes followed the girl.  He could attack her now. She was alone.  The adults along the main street were preoccupied.  Why did he wait? Thoughts that had nagged him all night wouldn't leave.

_Why isn't she scared?_

Over the decades hardened adults, religious officiates, and professors of the paranormal had been called in to get rid of him.  Beetlejuice had made them all wet themselves and given them lifelong PTSD.  _That_ was the real reason the Afterlife bureaucracy had banished him to this pitiful, tiny town off the beaten path of pretty much everything.  He gave too much evidence that there was life after death, or, at least, of something supernatural that science had yet to identify.

So why wasn't she scared witless? Beetlejuice observed her with the intensity of a hawk eyeing a mouse, and remembered the exchange he'd witnessed between her and the woman who apparently was her step-mother.

The kid was pissed off.  About life in general.  Sure, when the ghost first appeared as the zombie and the rabid dog she had momentary terror.  But she threw it aside for anger.  _She_ attacked _him_. That had _never_ happened before in his death

_Gotta hand it to the gutsy little dweeb_ , Beetlejuice admitted, in spite of himself.

_It's because he's a bully._   Lydia's jaw clenched.  _I've had to deal with bullies all my life.  I'm tired of it.  Powerful or not, he's not going to get the best of **me.**  
_

"I know you're in here!" Lydia yelled.

Beetlejuice watched and waited, unseen.

"I'm having a Halloween party at five o'clock this afternoon, and _you're_ invited!" Lydia scanned the cemetery.  "My room!  Second floor, second door on the left!"  She paused.  Nothing.  She sensed he was an arrogant jerk, so she capped off her challenge by shouting, "That is, if you're not too _chicken!_ "

The poltergeist's eyebrows shot up, then crouched over his glowing eyes as he glowered.

Lydia flapped her arms like frantic wings.  "Brrrawk brawk bukKAW!"  She tossed her head.  " _Humph!_ "  She made sure her marching away was as dramatic and contemptuous as possible.

Beetlejuice could barely contain himself.  His nostrils flared, trickling black smoke, as he watched her departure and thought at her, _Oh, I'll **be** there.  An' yer gonna regret it for th' rest of yer life!_

As the little girl marched down the main street toward home, a sign in the second-story window of the hardware store caught Beetlejuice's eye.  It was a ghostly sign, the words blurred beyond recognition to the living.  But he read it, clearly.

_We want to talk to you.  Yes, you, jerkjuice._

The ghost sniggered.  _Someone wants t' rattle my cage.  How **cute**.  
_

Aware the Maitlands were tracking him from their window, Beetlejuice took his time.  He switched to his ghostly form,  a misty figure, all but invisible in the October sunshine.  He paused at the shops, hands in his pants pockets, admiring the lights and decorations as Peaceful Pines readied for Halloween.  Not much happened in the village, so its residents made the most of every holiday.

Barbara and Adam were waiting in the yard behind their store.

"I only came over t' piss ya off because I'm out an' ya can't do a damn thing about it."  Beetlejuice leaned forward mockingly.  "Sayin' my name three times only works if I'm in yer hauntin' perimeter, an' _that_ ain't gonna happen."

"That's what makes you happy, huh?"  Barbara wasn't as abrasive as usual.  Her tone was, what?  Pitying?  "No one likes you, no one loves you, and I bet no one ever did."

Beetlejuice scoffed.  "The Ghost With the Most doesn't need that sappy stuff."

"I hear through the Neitherworld grapevine that you don't have any friends there, either.  You've no one to talk to, to share with, to have fun with, not even the people who rent apartments in your roadhouse.  You're just destruction and misery.  What a way to spend eternity!"

Beetlejuice examined his fingernails, yawning.  "Do you have a _point?_ "

"That girl has no friends, either."  Adam indicated the small figure now entering the house on the hill.  "Try to scrape together a tablespoon of empathy and stop haunting her."

"She gives as good as she gets," Beetlejuice conceded, resentfully.

"Probably because she has to!" said Barbara.  "Leave her alone.  Go bother someone else, like that wretched Claire Brewster, who needs a good spanking."

"Barbara!"  Adam was astonished.

"Oh, Adam, she gets anything she wants, yet she _shoplifts_!  Poor Bill. I swear I'm going to say **BOO** to her next time."

Beetlejuice played a tiny violin.

"You're insufferable!" snapped Barbara. "Why we thought we could move you to have an atom of compassion is beyond me!  I promise, if I can find some way to send you back, _I'll do it!_ "

"Blah, blah, blah."  Beetlejuice checked the clock on the VFW hall.  "Sorry, losers, but I have a _date_."

He snapped his fingers with derision and vanished.

*  *  *  * *

" _Why_ aren't you dressed, young lady?"  Delia was in her element, which was frazzled with a side of panic.

"I don't want to risk that lovely dress getting mussed, Mother," said Lydia.  It was true enough.  The cleaner that stupid thing was, the easier it'd be for Delia tor return it.  Not that Manhattan designers accepted returns.

Delia beamed.  "I _knew_ you'd like it!  Go put it on!  The guests will be arriving any minute!"

Lydia scrunched her face.  "It's only four thirty.  The party's at seven."

"Good lord, Lydia, you know that drinks and nibbles always start _hours_ before the main event!"

Lydia did know.  But hardly any of the guests owned cars, half never had a driver's license, so they weren't used to driving at all, let alone miles on the interstate.  She was hoping they'd take a wrong turn and get lost in Pennsylvania.  Her expectation was there'd be no guests when she had her showdown with the poltergeist.  This complicated things.  What if he decided to go after _them_ before he went after _her?_

_No, I think I angered him too much_ , she thought.  _He won't waste time with anyone else, he'll come right for me._   This made her swallow nervously.  She was taking a hell of a risk.

Lydia had never been religious.  But she knew, now, that there was life after death.  Or at least she was _fairly_ certain he was a ghost of a formerly living person, and not some supernatural _living_ person.

Could he be...from Hell?  Did it exist?  Was he a _demon_?

"Hel-LO!" Delia barked, yanking back Lydia's attention.  "Did you take a shower yet?"

The girl glanced at the clock.  "I'll do it now!"

"And blow-dry your hair!" Delia called after her as she ran up the stairs, dodging decorators who were coming down.  "And would it hurt you to put on some makeup?  These people are _artists_ , you _know_ how they feel about a blank canvas!"

" _Ugh_."  Lydia hurried into her room.  She had no intention of changing from her black, knee-length dress and tights into the dress she hadn't taken from its box, or to shower.  Instead, she picked up the carrier and took Percy to what she hoped would be safety in the bathroom.  If the poltergeist did take her out, she didn't want the kitten to be hurt.

"Wish me luck, Perc," she whispered.  The kitten mewed quizzically.

Lydia double-checked what she'd set up.  She sat on her bed, inhaled shakily, and waited.

*  *  *  *

"Shinique! Emrys! Amaya! Seraphina! Freva! Callum!" Delia said it like a chant.  She and the extraordinarily dressed people air-kissed.  "The drive was wretched, wasn't it?"

"Only for you, Delia, would we carpool through the heart of darkness to this backwater."  The pale white man with salt-and-pepper mohawk and goatee sharpened to a point dropped his car keys on the tray of drinks a waiter offered him.  The young girl stared at the keys, confused.

" _Why?"_   The black woman with ceramic disks in her hair twists gestured at the big picture window, indicating the village spread below them.  She looked at Delia with incredulous pity.

"I _know._   Every morning I wake up and want to gut myself with a palette knife.  But!"  Delia shoved a young man with the tray of tiny food toward the group.  "Just _wait_ till you hear Charles' plan!  And mine!  Charles and _my_ plan!"

"Where's the sprite?"  The white man with a chestnut buzzcut and a beard you could hide a groundhog in shoved two canapes designed to look like Delia's sculptures into his mouth and chewed as if mixing mortar.

"God, Emrys, who knows?  Does it ever take a child less than an hour to get dressed?"

_Is that whut she's doing?_   An unnoticeable ice-cold fog in the corner, Beetlejuice watched it all with immeasurable disgust. He looked at the dweeb's dad, schmoozing on the other side of the room with big men in expensive suits.

"I'll make an offer on that library first."  Charles was practically giddy.  "How can they refuse?  Who uses a _library_ these days?"

"What d'ya think they'll take for that hardware store?" the black man named LeFrak asked from around his cigar.  "Do these folks have any idea of market value?"

"Market value from nineteen-eighty, maybe!" said Charles. "We'll make a killing!"  The men richly guffawed and emptied their glasses.

_Yeah, suck down yer expensive booze an' microscopic food.  I'll deal with ya later_.  Beetlejuice glanced at the triangular clock.  Five PM.  He looked upward and grinned balefully.

_It's showtime._

The poltergeist floated straight up, through the ceiling.

*  *  *  *

Beetlejuice slowly rose through the floor of the girl's bedroom.

Except for its being garishly decorated with Delia's bizarre, yellow-ribboned concept of Halloween, the room was the same. Though the cat carrier and the kitten were missing. The kid had probably stowed them in a back room for the party.

Beetlejuice focused on the shape under the blanket in the bed.

_Whut?  She's **sleeping**?  Th' frick?  
_

His curiosity got the better of him.  Shooting his cuffs, Beetlejuice thought, _She's gotta be fakin'.  OK, smartass, I'll play this game._

Shifting to his corporeal form, Beetlejuice floated toward the foot of the bed.  The kid's sides gently rose and fell.  He hesitated, watching.  Why the hell was he watching?  He shook his head to clear it.

When he was so close his knees were all but touching the bed, Beetlejuice stopped.  Silent, emanating an aura so cold it cast frost on the top of the blanket, he shifted to his rotting corpse form.  He raised his arms to strike.  And, for some reason, paused.

During that pause, Lydia sat up with the speed of a rattler.  Beetlejuice had half a second to register the twine wound around her right hand and up and over her bed curtain before the girl yanked it, hard.

A literal bucket of water dumped on his head, soaking him through.

The poltergeist was so startled he unintentionally shifted to his normal form.  He glared at the little girl, who was glaring back at him with equal fierceness.

" _What?_ " Beetlejuice yelled, indignant.  "Did ya think I'd _melt?!_ "  His eyes widened when he saw her left hand held the end of another length of twine.

Lydia smirked at him grimly and yanked.

Strong-smelling matter fell on the soaked ghost in a huge clump.

Coated, Beetlejuice spat it out and wiped off his eyes.  "Whut th' hell is _this_ crap?!"

Lydia kicked off her blanket.  "Salt, anise, amaranth, basil, cayenne, chamomile, clove, cumin, dill, and fennel!"

Beetlejuice blinked.  "Yer tryin' t' exorcise me with Italian seasoning?"

"Between that and the holy water it should have worked!" snapped Lydia, extremely irritated.

"Says who?"

"This book!"  Lydia grabbed the book from under her pillow and threw it at the ghost.

Beetlejuice caught it.  With a snap of his fingers the herbs vanished, and he was dry.  He gave the cover a once-over.  In Claire Brewster's voice, he said, "Oh, like, plu- _eeez_."

Lydia was surprised.  "You sound exactly like Claire Brewster."

In Lydia's voice, the poltergeist repeated, "You sound exactly like Claire Brewster."  In his normal deep, dry, sardonic voice he said, "I can sound like anyone."  He tossed the book aside and put his hands on his hips.  "Look, brat, these paranormal experts wouldn't know a ghost if one bit 'em.  I should know, I've bit enough."

"I am not a brat!"

"Yeah, ya are!"

"No, _you_ are!"

" _Me?_ I may be dead, but I'm thirty-seven frickin' years old!  A grown man can't be a brat!"

"Oh, yes they can!  Believe me, _I'm_ an expert on _that!_ "  Lydia placed her hands on the bed, leaned toward the ghost, and yelled with all her anger and exasperation,  " _Why_ _are you_ _haunting me_?"

The ghost placed his hands on the bed and leaned toward the girl.  He yelled with all his pent-up aggravation, " _Why aren't ya scared?_ "

They glared daggers at each other, huffing.

Bitter and resentful, against his better judgement, Beetlejuice demanded, "How th' frick did ya do that lightning strike?"

"You were controlling the lightning, _you_ should know!"

"I wasn't!  Didn't need to!  I just turn on th' juice an' see whut shakes loose!"

Confounded, Lydia snorted.  "Is that meant to be a catch phrase?"

"It's a good one!" said Beetlejuice, defensively.

Lydia sat back.  "Who has a catch phrase?  Except rappers and used car salesmen?"

"I do!"  Beetlejuice straightened.  "The Ghost with Th' Most!"

Unable to hold back, Lydia laughed.  "Is _that_ what you call yourself?"

"That's whut _everybody_ calls me!"  Galled, Beetlejuice crossed his arms over his chest, floated, and crossed his legs in mid air.

"Who's everybody?"

"That's fer me t' know an' you t' not know," he sulked.

Lydia couldn't fight wanting to know.  "The most what?"

"Everythin'!" he replied, as if it was obvious.

Crossing her arms, Lydia said, "Not the most scientific knowledge, _that's_ for sure."

"Why would I need any?" Beetlejuice asked, suspiciously.

Not even realizing how eager she was, Lydia explained, "OK, so, a normal person can't make lightning strike a certain place.  But you can encourage it if it's already striking."  She looked at the ghost to see if he was following her.

Not realizing he was fascinated, Beetlejuice prompted, "And?"

Pleased with herself, the girl continued, "Lightning likes to strike the highest point.  Copper and lemon juice are great conductors of electricity.  Marble and plastics like vinyl aren't."

The poltergeist replayed what had happened.  "Sooo... Me, on top of th' highest hill in th' cemetery, holdin' a copper pot fulla strong lemonade...You, in a low spot, sittin' on top of plastic on a marble tombstone..."  He paused.  Without thinking about it, he admitted, "That's impressive."

Without thinking about it, Lydia responded, "Thank you."  She hesitated, then confessed, "Your storm was, too."

"Yeah?" Beetlejuice had never before heard his destruction praised.

Reservation cast aside, Lydia enthusiastically gushed. "I mean, deadly-vu!  Everyone in my class was screaming," she put up her hands and cried in an exaggerated, girlie voice, "Help, help, we're all gonna die!  Mommy, daddy!"

They both laughed.

"Deadly-vu?"  It was Beetlejuice's turn to snort.  "Is _that_ a catch-phrase?  Whut's that mean?"

"I don't know, it's just something I say."

Through the floor came loud, hyena-like laughter.

"Whut th' hell are they doin' down there?" said Beetlejuice, irritated at being interrupted.

"Argh, it's embarrassing."  Lydia covered her face with her hands.  "It's a seance."

"Yer frickin' kiddin' me."

"I wish I were.  It's not a real one.  It's Serafina's," Lydia formed air quotes, "'Performance Art' for her upcoming Museum of Modern Art installation, 'Victoriana Death Wish.'"

Beetlejuice's interest was piqued.  "So, they don't believe in ghosts?"

"The only thing they believe in is being cooler and more sophisticated than anyone else on the planet.  If they saw a ghost, they wouldn't be frightened.  They'd deconstruct it. "

"Wouldn't be frightened, huh?"  Beetlejuice grinned at her, scheming.

Lydia shook her head.  "You don't understand.  Demon, ghost, zombie, serial killer, decapitated corpse oozing pus and maggots, you can't be _anything_ scary enough to terrify _that_ crowd.  These are jaded New Yorkers"  She sat back against her pillows and grunted with derision.  "One's a Broadway producer.  _Nothing_ scares _him_."

Beetlejuice spied a small, empty, white plastic bottle sticking out from under the bed.  He picked it up.

The ghost looked at the little girl conspiratorially.

"I bet ya all th' Halloween candy in Peaceful Pines _I_ can scare them."

Lydia didn't even try to resist her grin.

*  *  *  *

Black crepe was draped throughout the large dining room.  In the center of the round table covered with black lace were two old Victorian lamps.  One was burning oil, the other inauthentically flickered with a bright, orange LED bulb. Hanging from the ceiling were neon signs.  The green one read DEATH.  The yellow one read LIFE.  The pink one read OTHER.  Red laser beams turned off and on, stabbing photos of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini.

The house-warming party guests sat around the table, their palms flat on it with their pinkies touching.  Between Delia and Charles was a trim, middle-aged woman, her short hair bleached white, who looked more suited for her editor's desk at her haute couture magazine than wearing a Victorian black Chantilly lace mantilla shawl over a screaming yellow silk pantsuit.  This was topped off with a taxidermied raven on her head, wearing a huge rhinestone necklace that said NEVERMORE.

"Appear, O spirits!" the woman self-named Serafina wailed, swaying side to side so far she bumped first Delia, then Charles.  The raven threatened to topple at any moment.

"O spirits, appear!" cried the others, reading the laminated three by five card scripts on the table in front of them.

"Prove to us there is life after death!"

"Word of Life After, we crave!" went the audience participation.

A brilliant spotlight stabbed from the ceiling to the center of the table.  The guests stared upward in awe.

"I don't even see how you're doing that!" cried Delia, delighted.

"But...I'm not," Serafina confessed.

" _I am_."

The rich, full, noble voice permeated the room.  From the ceiling, slowly,  a man descended, first his sandaled feet, then his white robe, then the red sash slung from his shoulder to his waist, then his face, framed by a trim beard and mustache and shoulder-length hair.  His powder-blue eyes met theirs brightly.

The man floated above the table, his right hand lifted, two fingers in a gesture of blessing.

"Serafina?"  Charles swallowed, staring at the visitation.

The woman shook her head vigorously.

"It's a projection."  The man named Callum reached for the man's foot.  When what he touched proved solid, he pulled back his hand as if bitten.

Delia removed the glass chimney from the oil lamp.  She held the flame to the toes of the man's left foot.  He didn't flinch.

"Oh, ye of little faith," said the man, smiling.

Delia dropped the lamp.  The man blinked.  The lamp righted itself, no harm done.

" _Jesus_ ," breathed Freva.

The man winked.  "Now."  He clasped his hands in front of himself.  " _What_ are we up to here, then?"  His voice took on a distinctly _Fargo_ movie accent.

Wide-eyed, the guests glanced imploringly at each other.

"Oh, I gotcha."  The rich voice reverberated like a patient, but supernatural, kindergarten teacher.  "So, yah, it's Halloween, then.  Everybody wants to play with the concept of death, isn't that right?"  The man slowly revolved as he spoke, looking at each guest as an individual.  "You, in particular!  You sophisticated people, you know everything about everything!  Right?"  He stopped revolving and smiled encouragingly, cuing them to respond.

"I'm an atheist," Shinique blurted.

"Sure! Well, that's OK, then!"  The man nodded vigorously.  He looked at Delia expectantly.

"Lapsed Catholic," she babbled.

He looked at Charles.

"L-L-Lapsed Episcopalian."

Around the table they mumbled answers, from secular Jew, lapsed Southern Baptist, to "experimented with paganism in college and now I'm agnostic but I still pray whenever the stock market drops two hundred points."

"Isn't that just so diverse!"  The man giggled.  "Now.  Have any other representatives of other beliefs shown up for your little seancey thingy?  Hm?"

As one they shook their heads.

The man spread his arms.  "Looks like I'm it!"

LeFrak ventured, hesitantly, "So...there's only _one_ faith?"

The man looked hurt.  "Oh, no, honey.  There are many faiths, and I love them all."

They smiled with relief.

"Especially," the man simpered, "the snake handlers!"

His hands disappeared up his flowing, white sleeves and immediately reappeared clutching hissing, writhing adders, poison dripping from their fangs.  He tossed them onto the table.

" _AAA!_ "   Their chairs fell over as they scrambled to get away from the snakes coiling and uncoiling on the black lace.

"Oh!" said the man, brightly.  "And guess what?"  Instantly his face was covered in red scales, his teeth became yellow fangs, his nostrils smoking fumaroles.  In a reverberating, guttural voice he bellowed, "THERE _IS_ A HELL."

They ran caterwauling from the room. Only the shaking Broadway producer stubbornly stood his ground.

"I know special effects when I see them!" he humbugged.  "You can't scare me, Serafina!"

The bearded man reverted to his friendly face.  He jumped off the table and grabbed the man around his shoulders.  "Hiya."  He held a smartphone's screen to the producer's face.  "You got an email from your landlord.  Your building's been sold and your rent control's canceled.  Here's how much your rent is now."

The producer stared.  He shrieked and bolted.

Serafina's stuffed crow sprang to life, cawing hideously, eyes like the red lasers.  It dove at them until they were out the front door, then it crashed into a wall.

When they had all fled the house, the bearded man was able to hear the hysterical laughter of the girl watching from the hall.

"Ya like it?" asked Beetlejuice, proudly.

Lydia managed to catch her breath.  "Oh my god, please, change back!  You look creepy!"

Beetlejuice reverted to his normal self.  "Yeah, I even freaked myself out.  I am never doin' _that_ again."

Lydia dared to look out the picture window.  The guests and her parents were standing in the driveway, all on their phones and gesticulating wildly.

Beetlejuice smoothed his jacket.  "I won that bet, babes."

"Fair and square!" Lydia conceded.  "But I don't have any Halloween candy to pay it, because I haven't been trick or treating."

"Well, th' night's still young.  Let's scram while they're callin' th' calvary."

"But, I don't have a costume."  Lydia's face lit up as she recalled Delia's words from earlier that afternoon. "C'mon!"

The girl ran through the house, dodging extremely confused caterers, and out the back door.  The ghost appeared on the back porch as she pried open the trash can.

"It's still here!"  Triumphantly, Lydia pulled out her red bed curtains with the spider-web design.  She wrapped herself in it.  After a whiff, she grimaced and took it off with disappointment.  " _Ew._   Not only does it stink, it's too big to wear."

Beetlejucie snapped his fingers.

The curtains lifted into the air, contracted, reshaped, and fell into Lydia's hands.

"Deadly- _vu!_ "  She sniffed them.  They smelled like roses.

"Try it on."

Ldia slipped it over her head.  It was a perfect poncho.  "How did you _do_ that?"

"I'm th' Ghost With th' Most, babe." Beetlejuice hesitated, then confessed, "Look, I can't juice stuff outta thin air.  But I can manipulate stuff that's already there.  Like so."

With a click of his fingers, Lydia's hair gently flowed upward.  A piece of the curtain became a purple ribbon and tied her hair into a black fountain.  Lydia reached up and touched it.

"Whaddaya think?"  he asked.

Lydia grinned harder than she ever remembered.  "I'll grab grocery bags for the candy!"

"Who wants regular old bags?"  Beetlejuice pointed and white laser-like bolts flew from his fingers and around the house's corner.  Soon two of the many pumpkins Delia had "artistically" carved floated from the front porch to the ghost and the girl.  They reshaped as jack o'lantern candy buckets, the stems their handles.  The LED lights that had lit them vanished and were replaced with an eerie green glow.

"Oh, they're perfect!"  Lydia held hers aloft, marveling with joy.  "But, what are _you_ going to wear?"

"Just my own unnatural handsomeness," said the ghost, passing his hand over his hair.

"Of course." Lydia rolled her eyes, then did something she was sure she never had before.  She giggled.

Beetlejuice indicated the main street below.  "Shall we?"

*  *  *  *

"Trick or treat!"

Jane Butterfield opened the door to her real estate office on Main Street and chirped, "My!  Aren't you just adorable little--"  She froze.

Lydia grinned at her.  "Hi, Mrs. Butterfield."  When the woman's daughter shoved her head past her mother to stare incredulously, Lydia added, "Hi, Jane."

"Hiya, Mrs. Butterfield," said the man with the deep, sardonic voice.

Jane Butterfield's bulging eyes fixed on his face.  No.  No, it wasn't possible.

The ugly man pointed at the bowl of candy.  "Ya givin' that out, or it is just decorative?"

"Mooom," whined Little Jane, "he looks _exactly_ like that man who came through the wall and said 'I'm gonna borrow your laptop' and we ran out of the den and called the police and they came and nobody was there, but your computer was frozen on a site with naughty pictures of women with big--"

Jane Butterfield slapped her hand over her daughter's mouth.

The man took the bowl from the paralyzed woman, dumped half in his bucket and half in Lydia's.  He jabbed the empty bowl at the daughter.  She squealed, dropped the bowl, and ran into the office.  The man winked at the woman as he and Lydia left.

Lydia covered her huge grin with her hand.  "I shouldn't laugh, it's terrible!"

"Whut?" huffed Beetlejuice.  "She's a gossipy, snotty, snooty bi---"  With a glance down at the girl, he stopped himself.  "Ya know whut I mean."

"I do."  Lydia looked up at him.  She asked, with a parody of propriety, "Do you take it upon yourself to impose retribution on _everyone_ who's an asshole?"

"I don't 'take it upon,' kid.  I just do whut I want."

Lydia sighed.  "Boy, it must be great to be dead."

The ghost stopped in his tracks.  He'd begrudgingly agreed it was better if he walked instead of floated.  For the first time, perhaps ever, he said with absolute, serious sincerity, "Don't believe that for a _second_."

Lydia blinked at him, astonished at the conviction in his tone.  "Ok."

Little kids with their parents and kids Lydia recognized from the public schools filled Peaceful Pines' two-block-long downtown.  Lydia felt a strange thrill walking with this man who, it seemed, had been set on killing her only an hour ago.  Or, she thought, he'd only wanted her to _believe_ that.  On the other hand, she'd been set on exorcising him.  She wondered if exorcism was like killing a ghost.  Maybe, perhaps, she'd ask him.

While he strolled with this kid, Beetlejuice felt a weird emotion he couldn't identify.  Was he _enjoying_ himself?  Was he actually feeling _comfortable_ with someone?  It didn't make sense.  She was a _kid_.

They entered Peaceful Pines Notions & Gifts, which already had several children receiving candy from the shop's owner, Mrs. Feldman.

"Like, what are _you_ supposed to be?  Besides _ugly?_ "

Lydia and Beetlejuice turned toward the laughing clutch of boys and girls, surrounding the blonde girl dressed as a cheerleader.  Claire rolled her eyes dismissively and returned to bathing in her entourage's veneration.

Lydia muttered to Beetlejuice, "That's Claire--"

"I know who that snot is."  He bent down, handed Lydia his bucket, and whispered in his gravely voice, "Watch this."

No one but Lydia saw him vanish, and she had to keep herself from making a startled noise.  There was too much activity and chatter for anyone else to observe a small jewelry box and a pair of Zirconia earrings float from the jewelry counter and plop into Claire's candy bag.

The ghost reappeared beside Lydia and took his bucket.  As the girl gave him a quizzical look, he pointed at Claire and said, in the voice of A Responsible Adult, "Young lady!  Put those back!"

Mrs. Feldman paused in her candy distribution as Claire jumped.  The woman frowned.  "Miss Brewster.  Let me see your bag."

"Huh?  Like, I haven't _done_ anything!"

" _Today_ ," Beetlejuice whispered to Lydia, who stifled her laugh.

Extracting the unpaid store items from the candy, Mrs. Feldman said, "I _knew_ you've been shoplifting.  All of the shops know you do, Claire!  Speaking for myself, you're banned from _my_ store!  I'll be having words with your parents."

"But, but, I _didn't!_ "

As the blonde girl and her confused, sullen sycophants walked by, Lydia and Beetlejuice sarcastically waved.  Claire saw Beetlejuice's face and striped suit and halted with a jerk.  The kids crashed into her.  Her mouth working like a guppy's, Claire Brewster gasped in recognition, then dropped her bag and ran as if the zombie was after her again.

As they stepped outside, Beetlejuice emptied Claire's bag into his and Lydia's buckets.  "We're almost full, kid."

"Do you eat candy?"

"Naw.  It's all yours."

"Do I _want_ to know what you eat?"

Large moths were circling the street light.  The ghost closed one eye, aimed the other at the swirling insects, and tilted his head.  A green striped tongue shot from his mouth, latched onto the largest moth, and gulped it down.

" **Ew**!"  Lydia grimaced, sticking out her own tongue.  " _Seriously?_ "

"Hey, _you_ eat those disgustin' orange marshmallow circus peanuts, yer in no position t' criticize other people's tastes."

"One more place!"  Lydia hurried toward Maitland's Hardware.

Beetlejuice stopped.  "Ya don't want t' go there."

She beamed at him.  "C'mon! I think there are ghosts here, too!"

Even as she finished her sentence, two figures walked out the front door and onto the porch.  Three little children ran up the steps and directly through the man and woman.

Lydia's jaw dropped.  She laughed in delight.  "Mr. and Mrs. Maitland!  I can _see_ you!"

Barbara and Adam were focused on Beetlejuice.  Without taking her eyes from him, Barbara said, "We're so happy to finally meet you, Lydia.  We made this just for you."

While the girl hurried to them and accepted the folded paper, the adult's eyes burned sullenly at each other.

"What's this?"  Lydia examined the note.  "'Read this aloud.'"  She looked at the couple.  "Now?"

"Yes," said Adam, his hardening expression fixed on the poltergeist.  "Now."

Lydia shrugged.  "Beetlejuice--"

Beetlejuice jerked, startled.  "Kid!  Wait!"

"Beetlejuice--"

" _Don't say it!_ "

"Beetlejuice?"

" **FRICK**."

The poltergeist vanished with a jolt of lightning and a clap of thunder.

Everyone in the street looked up, worried the weather had changed.

Gasping, Lydia stared at the greenish smoke where the man had been.  In shock, she looked to the Maitlands. "What happened?!"

"Lydia," Barbara said, "he's a poltergeist."

"I _know!_ "

"No, you don't."  Adam tried to sound reasonable.

"He's evil," Barbara stated unequivocally.  "He has no morals and no ethics.  If he had the milk of human kindness when he was alive, it soured decades ago after he died."

"But..."  Considering what she'd been through over the past three days, Lydia couldn't believe she was saying this.  "He didn't seem so bad."

Barbara came down to the bottom step, the very edge of her haunting territory.  "He's a con man, Lydia.  He's very seductive."

"You mean..."  Lydia's face pinched with disgust.  "He's a _pedophile?_ "

"No!  He wouldn't hurt a child sexually!  Or even physically!  But, well... You've seen he won't hesitate to torture children with fear!"

"You don't want anything to do with him," said Adam.  "Believe us, we have a lot of experience with him."

"He goes from trying to terrify you to trick or treating with you?"  Barbara shook her head.  "That doesn't make any sense.  He's up to something.  I can't imagine what.  But it won't be safe for you."

"You've got to be wary," said Adam.

Despite all they said, Lydia only wanted to know one thing.  "How do I get him back?"

The couple exchanged almost parental glances of concern.

"There's only one way," said Barbara.  "And we're not going to tell you."

"He's not to be trusted!" Adam emphasized.  "He's _dangerous_."

"He won't hurt me sexually or physically, but he's dangerous?"  Quietly, Lydia said,  "Thanks for your help.  But...I want to decide for myself."

"Dear, you're just a child," Barbara began.

"Good night."  Turning her backs to the ghosts, and all of Peaceful Pines, Lydia picked up the ghost's bag of candy and headed home.

*  *  *  *

"At least you're in one piece this time," said Ginger when the ghost suddenly zapped into the Roadhouse.

" _Shaddap!_ "  Beetlejuice stormed into his apartment.  He slammed his door.  Not pleased with its loudness, he slammed it again, harder.  The top hinge popped off.  He kicked it under his coffin bed.

He swore every expletive he knew.  The ghost stopped in his tracks, shuddering with rage.

_Whut th' hell am I so mad about?_   He looked at himself in his mirror.  Incredibly, his characteristically pallid face had turned red.

_It's th' Maitlands!  Interferin' with my fun!_   Beetlejuice _was_ having fun.  But admitting that meant admitting _why_ he was having fun.  He couldn't bring himself to do that. And because he couldn't, he plopped on his coffin bed and seethed.

*  *  *  *

_How many times have I seen police lights this week?_

Lydia stood on the hill, in the dark, holding a bucket of candy in each hand and discretely watching the police sigh and take notes as Delia shriek-talked.

"He was dressed as Jesus?"  The officer sounded mildly intrigued.

"He had snakes!"  Delia checked with Charles.

Charles, seated in the ambulance's open doors, pulled back the oxygen mask and nodded vehemently.  "Live!  Snakes!  Poisonous!"

"OK, pal, I think you don't actually need this."  The paramedic tried to take the oxygen mask.

Charles clutched it with an iron grip. "I'll buy this.  Name your price."

"I wasn't fooled for a nanosecond."  The Broadway producer exhaled with unmitigated boredom.  "Honestly, Delia, that was trying too hard."

The other New Yorkers nodded their agreement, ignoring their wet crotches.

With heavy steps, Lydia entered through the back door.  The caterer was gone, leaving behind untouched food and alcohol.  The girl knew the bill was going to be doubled.

She let confused, mewing Percy out of his carrier and carried him on her shoulder into her room.  There, sitting on the bed between the two bulging buckets of candy, Lydia felt utterly bereft.

_I barely know him.  How can I **miss** him?  It's stupid.  **I'm** stupid!  Besides, Barbara and Adam are right.  He's dangerous._

Lydia's window was still open, its curtains moving ever so slightly in the cool breeze.  She looked through the binoculars.

The last of the trick or treaters were headed home.  Halloween lights snapped off, one by one.  The raucous music from the Dew Drop Inn tripped up the hill.

The cemetery was as dark and still as a grave.

Lydia's face fell.  _Where **are** you?_


	6. Chapter 6

"You are not to haunt the living today?"  Jacques was used to the poltergeist being gone before the skeleton left for his morning workout at the gym.

"Mind yer own business," hissed Beetlejuice, sitting on the living room couch and staring hatefully at nothing.

"I would," said Jacques, placing the rolled up morning newspaper under his arm, "but your _mauvaise humeur_ , your mood, it is so foul it is almost contagious, and this, I do not care to catch."

"Tough!" he barked.  "I want ya t' feel lousy!  I want _everybody_ t' feel _lousy!_ "

"I don't know what's inta ya this morning," Ginger said sharply as she crawled down the wall and headed for the front door, "but jeez, go sulk in the Living world, like poltergeists are supposed ta."

"Don't tell me whut poltergeists're supposed to do!" Beetlejuice yelled.

"So suffer by yourself alone!" Jacques said.  He and Ginger shut off the living room lights and closed the door firmly after them.

"I will!  _That's th' way I like it!_ "  Sitting in the early morning dark, Beetlejuice stuffed his hands in his pants pockets and reassured himself that that was true.

*  *  *  *

Lydia sighed disconsolately as she trudged home from the Egglectic Cafe.

Usually she loved diners and their the affable chatter, clicking ceramic plates, and the smell of robust coffee and fresh pancakes. This Sunday morning, however, it all smelled like dust to her.

"Why are you so listless?'' Delia had asked at breakfast, while she downed her third aspirin and second cup of French Press coffee.

"Obviously, she's worn out."  Charles looked like he'd tossed and turned for hours.  "It must have taken you all night to get that candy, pumpkin."

"You were supposed to be _here_ , not gallivanting around by yourself," said Delia, disapproving.

"By myself," Lydia muttered.  She couldn't decide whether to be mad at the Maitlands or mad at herself for feeling the loss of a person she could hardly call a friend.  So she went numb.

"Good thing she _wasn't_ here," Charles murmured, poking a fork at the things Delia alleged were waffles.

"Do not speak of last night!"  Delia's left eyelid twitched.  "We will _never_ speak of it."

Surprising herself, Lydia blurted, "Would you like some bagels?"

Her stepmother blinked.  "Do they _have_ bagels in Connecticut?"

"They have bagels even in Minnesota, mother."

"Anything they call a bagel in Minnesota isn't, Lydia.  _Where_ could you find them in this town with no taste?"

"There's a diner."  Talking required more effort than Lydia wanted to expend, but it was necessary in order to get out of the house.  "I saw a bakery case through the window."

"If they have egg, I won't say no," said Charles, pushing his untouched plate away.

"And get _decent_ schmear.  Not that cream cheese that tastes like tofu."

_Like you know what tofu tastes like_.  "Ok."

Now with a bag of bagels and what was sure to be Delia-disappointing cream cheese in hand, Lydia listlessly wandered down Main Street.  Most shops were closed on Sunday.  Of course, Our Lady of Perpetual Help was open for business.

"Good morning!"  Father O'Hara, standing by the open door as parishioners entered, spied her.  When she barely lifted her head in response, he joked, "So, young Miss Deetz, did you get rid of the evil demon?"

"Unfortunately," Lydia said, morosely.

She felt him blinking at her in bafflement as she passed.  Maitland's Hardware was next door.  Resentfully, Lydia crossed the road to the cemetery.  She stood under the iron arch, looking in.

Birds chirped in the trees and bushes.  A chipmunk scurried between tombstones.  Crows cawed in the pines.

Sighing heavily, Lydia trudged down the sidewalk.

From behind the bushes on the opposite side of a weathered stone wall a few yards from the sidewalk, a teenage girl's voice stated, "I swear it was the same guy!"

An acrid smell stabbed Lydia's nostrils.  Pot.  She was about to cross the road again so she wouldn't get coated with the stink when a teen boy's voice said, "What? Are you talking about the guy you said turned into--"

"A demon!"

Lydia froze.

Three or four voices laughed.  "Y'all were wasted!" said a different boy.

"It was real, _I swear_ it was _real!_ " cried the first voice.  "Troy, back me _up_ _!_ "

A third boy's voice said, low, "He made us say his name _three times_.  He demanded that we _chant_ it."

"And _mean_ it!" said the girl.  "Sort of...an incantation!"

"This stripe-suited guy tole y'all what to chant?"

"He wasn't _specific_ , he said we could make it up!  But it had to have his name _three times_!"

"Man, that whiskey boiled what brains y'all got.  _Please_."

"Tree roots sprang out of the ground!  They _grabbed us_!" said the boy named Troy.

Lydia realized she was panting.  She held her breath to keep from being heard.

"Some little girl in a red poncho was _with him_ last night!"

"Well hell, that just proves he wasn't what you said.  What ghost would be walking around downtown with a kid?"

" _It was him!_ "

"Prove it.  Say his name three times."

Clutching the paper bag of bagels so tightly it ripped, Lydia waited.

"So...we can't remember it _all_........"

"Yeah, _what_ was I saying?  Whis-key."

"Part of it was....like, bug guts."

"No, it was something like....beetle smoosh?  Whatever it was, I am _never_ saying it again, not even _once!_ "

Lydia ran home, holding the bag tightly to her chest.

*  *  *  *

"Ly-di-AH!"  Delia's sing-song bellowed up the stairs.  "We're going for a Sunday drive to Hart-FORD!  You're welcome to come along!"

"Thanks, no, Moth-ER.  I have things to do."

Lydia heard, " _What_ can that girl have to do on a Sunday?"

"That's why we pay top dollar for internet and streaming service, Delia."

The front door shut.

Lydia went downstairs and locked all the doors.

Percy followed her as Lydia placed her round table in the middle of her room.  She pulled off the horrible, retro 1980s table cloth full of screamingly bright geometric shapes and tossed it in the corner.  Her spider-web poncho covered the small table well.

 _I have no idea what I'm doing_ , Lydia thought as she went downstairs.  The caterer hadn't touched the dining room's chaos, stating that cleaning up after whatever had happened was _not_ in her contract, and _no,_ another two hundred dollars in cash wasn't going to move her.  Lydia stepped among the tumult and grabbed the Victorian oil lamp.

"What do you get when you smoosh a beetle?" Lydia asked Percy as she set the lamp in the center of her table.  The kitten batted at the poncho's hem as the girl answered herself.  "Juice.  Beetle.  Juice.  'Turn on the juice', he said.  The Maitlands had me say it _three times_."  Lydia removed the lamp's glass chimney and set it down, then struck a wooden match.  The flame took to the oil-sodden wick quickly.  "It was his _name_."  She replaced the chimney.  "I have to chant it.  And _mean_ it."

Her lined school notebook in hand, the girl sat on her bed.  Percy padded in a circle on the blanket, purring loudly.  Lydia clicked her pen and began to compose.

*  *  *  *

At five thirty the sun was setting behind the trees.

"Pumpkin, we ran into the Charneys and got to talking business.  So we're staying overnight," said Charles, in Hartford.  "Are you sure you'll be okay alone?"

"Father, I've only stayed alone how many times in New York?"

"Yes, but there were no rabid dogs or sickos impersonating Jesus."

"There were rabid rats and that man who stood on the corner impersonating Jesus."

"He wasn't a sicko, Lydia, he was local color.  Besides, he and the man impersonating Mohamed were such a nice couple."

"He wasn't impersonating, Father, his name _was_ Mohamed."

"Oh. Still, they were cute.  And they never threw snakes at anybody!  Did you lock all the doors and set the alarm?"

"Yes, Father.  I'm fine."

"Ok, then.  Love you!  Goodnight."

"Love you, too.  Goodnight."

Since he was at dinner with real estate chums, Lydia could be certain he wouldn't call until the morning, before she left for school.

Assuming she was still alive.

Because what if Barbara and Adam were wrong? What if the poltergeist came back and he was furious with her? How could they know, for certain, that he wouldn't hurt her?

Lydia set her jaw.  She drew her bedroom curtains closed.  Her room warmly glowed with the lamp's light.

She wore black flats, black tights, and her knee-length black dress with a purple sash wrapped around her waist.  Her hair was swept upward, held by the black ribbon the ghost had made on Halloween.

If this went wrong, there was no one to help her.

If it went right..........  Could it ever be _right?_

_You have to be wary_ , Adam said yesterday.

Lydia raised her arms, took a deep breath, and began the chant she'd written and memorized.

"Knowing that I _should_ be wary,

Still, I venture someplace scary.

Ghostly haunting I turn _loose!_ "  


Another breath, deeper, released with all her might.  


"Beetlejuice.

Beetlejuice!

 _Beetlejuice!_ "

A burst of wind threw open the french doors to her small balcony.  The curtains whipped like sails.  Thunder roared and a lightning bolt flashed in the cloudless night sky.

Green smoke appeared, shifting into a human shape, laughing maniacally. Another flash, and there he stood.

They looked at each other for a long time.  Rain started pelting.

Beetlejuice crossed his arms over his chest and sniffed as if irritated.  "I'm not some genie you can call t' grant yer wishes, kid.  I'm a poltergeist."

"I know."

Beetlejuice controlled the corners of his mouth. He examined his nails. "I'm sure Babs an' Adam filled ya in on my CV."

"Yes."  Lydia pressed her lips together tightly, refusing to allow them to do what they wanted to.

The ghost raised one eyebrow.

"I'm old enough to form my own opinion about things, thank you very much."

"Adults would call that stupid."

"I've seen enough adult behavior to know what the word 'hypocrite' means."  Lydia sat down on her bed and petted Percy, who was staring at the ghost.  "I also know that I can get rid of you."  She raised her chin and looked at him with half-closed, confident eyes.  "If I want."

Beetlejuice repeated, in her voice, "'If I want.'"  He sat back in mid-air, crossed his legs, and said in his real voice,  "What's that, a threat?"

"A statement of fact," Lydia said, smugly, scritching Percy under his chin.

Beetlejuice clasped his hands behind his head and asked, as if he couldn't care less about her answer, "So why'd ya call me?"

"Maybe I'm curious."

Finally, Beetlejuice chuckled and spoke his mind.  "You are one weird kid."  He grinned broadly.  "One unique babes."

"You like weird, huh?"  Lydia beamed.  "Want to see my photos of snot on my fingertip?"

"Seriously?  Lemme see."

Lydia hopped off the bed, took out her photo file from her locked bureau drawer, and sat back down.  The ghost sat next to her as she opened the file and handed him a black and white photo.

"Wow.  Ya really captured how viscous and gooey it is against th' texture of yer fingerprint!"

Lydia's face glowed.  No one had ever praised her photographs before.

"This yer snot or somebody else's?" Beetlejuice asked.

Lydia laughed.  "Mine!  Who else would I get it from?"

"Mine's green," Beetlejuice bragged.

"Ooo!" Lydia squealed.  "Can I see?"

 

**The Beginning.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grateful thanks to my alpha editor, blackwingsblackheart, whose keen eyes and incredible expertise makes my fanfic and professional manuscripts so much better than I could make them on my own.


	7. Addendum: A Cartoon Scene From Chapter 2.

On my Tumblr I posted a Cartoon Sketch of when Beetlejuice first sees Lydia: https://rtfics.tumblr.com/post/180868557896/the-first-time-he-saw-her

I also drew a scene from Lydia and Beetlejuice's confrontation in Chapter 2.  https://rtfics.tumblr.com/post/180798111566/cartoon-scene-from-falling-in-loathe-how

I'd post it here, as an additional chapter, except I've yet to figure out how to add images in AO3


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